


The Scales and the Sword

by foolish_mortal



Category: The Hitcher (1986)
Genre: Anal Sex, Bloodplay, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, Homophobic Language, M/M, Oral Sex, Rimming, Unhealthy Relationships, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 10:47:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 40,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolish_mortal/pseuds/foolish_mortal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim loves how law is the scales of justice instead of the sword, but John Ryder may convince him that swords have their uses and nothing about jurisprudence is black and white.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story has accompanying art by the fantastic mandraco [here](http://mandraco.livejournal.com/49137.html)
> 
> This story has been divided since posting from a one-shot to a four chapter story.
> 
> There is no thanks in the world that can do justice to my beta [missaffliction](http://archiveofourown.org/users/assassinerblue/pseuds/missaffliction) and her tireless work and endless enthusiastic support. This story could not have existed without her.
> 
> Thanks also to my friend Rachel for giving me a crash course in the life of a pre-law student.
> 
> Finally, thanks to the [ Small Fandom Bang](smallfandombang.livejournal.com) and its mods. This comm and its sister community [Small Fandom Fest](http://smallfandomfest.livejournal.com/) are always lots of fun and fantastically managed.

It was Harvard's homecoming weekend, and Jim was holed up in the deserted library reading for a paper that wasn't due for a couple more weeks. Homecoming meant parties at fraternity houses, and Jim's father had been pushing him to get involved with his old fraternity, Zeta Alpha Rho. It was, Jim's father would have said, a Halsey men tradition. Jim knew he had enough legacy in Zeta Alpha Rho with his father and brother to become a member, but he had already gone four semesters without so much as setting a foot onto fraternity property, and he intended to keep it that way.

Jim's older brother Brian was unemployed and lived in a dump of a house in New Hampshire drinking beer on the government's dime, and so it had fallen to Jim to assume his place as the golden child. He was supposed to be the kind of son his parents bragged about, one with a promising career in law, a pretty girlfriend, and a thousand friends with identical haircuts and white polo shirts. Jim was afraid his father would find out he was a failure too. He was afraid of becoming someone like his brother, turned into an empty husk and crushed under their father’s boot.

So he made the usual excuses about classwork, and Jim's mother said let the boy work, he's in college after all. His father grumbled and agreed but told Jim he would turn into an egghead with no friends. But Jim didn’t even have the distinction of kindling that quick spark of brilliance that made everything fall into his lap. He faked smarts with perseverance and brute force and long hours, and he procrastinated on all the things his father wanted him to do.

It was becoming harder to pretend. He was a junior now, and time was running out. He didn't want to graduate next year, because college was the only place he could be himself away from his father's eyes, while his father believed that it was the only place Jim could make something of himself.

So on the afternoon of homecoming weekend, Jim found the smallest darkest corner of the library and sat down to read. He really did love studying law. His father's job as a top attorney and his dogged propaganda throughout Jim's childhood and adolescence had nothing to do with it—he had loved the clean beauty of it from the beginning, the way it could be shaped and the places it was rigid. He loved how it was the scales of justice instead of the sword.

No one else was in the library, and the tall high-set windows drowned out the sounds of shouting and music outside. Dust motes hung heavy in the air and were illuminated by the evening autumn light. Jim was reading through a section of particularly dull case law and found himself nodding off.

A hand descended on the chair in front of him. A pair of weathered jeans and a long dark jacket entered Jim's line of sight. "Mind if I sit here?"

Yes, I mind, Jim thought. There are plenty of other places to sit. Go away.

"Sure, go ahead," he replied instead, and the man sat down.

He was older. Handsome. He had light hair and pale eyes that looked like they had once been brighter and bluer but had since faded.  Jim tried to ignore him, but he could feel the man watching him as he read.

"Not a day most students spend at the library," the man said.

Jim decided not to dignify that with a response. "Are you here for the football game?"

The man had a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes as if he knew a joke that Jim didn't. "You could say I'm an alumnus. I was in the engineering school here."

Jim tried to feign interest. "What kind of engineer?" Alumni loved to talk about their lives as students, and sometimes all they wanted was a polite ear. All their stories sounded the same to him, successful careers and beautiful women and juvenile regrets, and they were all closer to his father's ideal than Jim could ever be. They always tried to give him advice when he never asked for it, and he wondered if they thought being older made them wiser.

The man shrugged. "Didn't decide. I dropped out when I was a sophomore."

That made Jim's head go up for a moment before he remembered he was trying to make the man go away. He pretended to read again. "Really? How come?"

The man stuck a cigarette between his teeth and lit it with fluid grace. "There was the whole world to see. Seemed like the college walls were keeping me from it."

"Sorry to hear that," Jim replied. "You're not allowed to smoke in the library, you know."

The man blew out a stream of smoke and regarded him with amusement. He held out the cigarette. "Want it?"

Jim eyed him for a moment and then looked away before taking the cigarette. "Thanks."

"Huh." The man's grin showed the white row of his teeth. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "You don't fool me, you know. I can always tell by the eyes."

"Tell what?" Jim asked. The man's voice was warm and friendly but curiously detached. Jim was intrigued in spite of himself.

A smile ghosted over the man's mouth. He stuck out a hand. "Name's John Ryder. Call me John."

Jim shook his hand. "John. I'm Jim Halsey."

"Jim Halsey," John repeated. "That's a good name. I had a friend named Jim in Wales."

Jim passed back the cigarette. "You've been to Wales?"

"Sure," John said. "Told you, I wanted to see the world."

When Jim was a child, he had sat in his mother’s lap as she turned the family's small painted china globe on its metal stand and showed him the Soviet Union, Italy, China. She had been born into a very well-to-do family and had frequently gone on vacations overseas. Greece, she had sighed and traced the little fragmented blob of color. Father took us to Greece one year. Oh, I loved it.

Jim thought of her now and turned down a smile. "You know, my mother told me never to do this."

John's lips curved up. "Do what?"

"Talk to strangers."

John went very still. "She's right. You really shouldn't."

"I'm talking to you, aren't I?"

"Yes, you are."

Jim felt an inexplicable chill go down his spine, and he began to pack up his books. "I'm, uh, I'm heading out."

John picked up a few of his books. "Mind some company?"

Jim looked down at the books in John's hands. He didn't look like he was about to let them go. "Yeah, okay."

John winked at the librarian as they walked out, and she frowned at his cigarette, but they were out the door before she could scold them. Jim was blinded by the flash of red and blue siren lights as he emerged from the university gates, and they had to cut around a string of yellow tape marking off a section of Massachusetts Avenue. A swarm of policemen was inspecting an abandoned car, and a dark smear was tinting the driver side window.

"What happened? An accident?"

"Something like that," John said. "Let's go."

John told him funny stories about his time as a student as they walked back to Jim's dorm. He talked about the electrical engineers blowing out the fuses in buildings during midterms and his class's April Fools prank involving the John Harvard statue and a Dark Vader costume. Jim almost laughed himself sick, and John gave him a toothy smile that made him look years younger.

"Well, this is me," Jim said with some regret as they stopped in front of Quincy House. He took the books from John and zipped them up in his backpack. "Thanks."

"My pleasure," John said, and he was far too close, invading Jim's personal space with abandon and staring at Jim unblinking.

It made Jim uncomfortable. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

John didn't say anything, and they stared at one another. Jim's eyes dropped to John's parted mouth and pale lips. "Nothing," John said finally, and Jim watched the pink tip of his tongue appear and disappear. "Just looking."

Jim felt a light touch against the hair at the nape of his neck and swatted at it on instinct. "Wha—"

John smiled and pulled his hand back. "You had a piece of fuzz."

Jim was no fool. He had seen his roommate use that line on pretty girls all the time, and he opened and closed his mouth to make the words come out. John's expression belied nothing but polite friendliness, and it was easier to believe that Jim had really been walking around with junk in his hair than the notion that John was making a pass at him.

"Uh. Thank you." Jim held out a hand. "It was nice meeting you, John."

John clasped it in both of his own, which Jim found kind of weird. "And you, Jim Halsey."

"B-Bye." Jim hated how his voice stuttered. He turned to look back before shutting the front door and found John still watching him, but by the time he went up to his room and looked out the window, the front step was empty.

 

Stories about the automobile accident buzzed around the student body for the next few weeks. Some freak accident had made the driver smash his face into the wheel hard enough to fatally fracture his skull, although the car body had sustained no damage that might have indicated a hit and run. The police were baffled and didn't know if they could even declare foul play, because for all intents and purposes it looked like the driver had been completely alone.

Jim didn't have time to think about it. Autumn meant autumn rush for the frats, and he spent the majority of two weeks avoiding phone calls from his father asking him if he'd gone to visit with some of the other hopefuls. Jim saw them sometimes from his window, swarms of them in their black peacoats and khakis, stomping their feet to chase off the cold and huddling together with their hands in their pockets like a colony of penguins. Jim would have loved to stay in his room for the whole weekend, but he had the unique misfortune of being from upstate New York, and his family had a habit of driving over unannounced.

"I wish you had told me you were coming sooner," Jim grumbled into the phone and stretched the phone cord to grab a wad of dirty laundry off the floor. His dorm was lucky enough to have a phone line installed in every room instead of a single one down the hall.

"Nonsense," his mother replied. "Can't your old parents come and see you without needing an invitation?"

"No, Mom, of course you can," Jim said. It was impossible to argue with his mother.

His roommate Mike was face-down and snoring on the rug, and Jim tried to toe him awake. Mike snorted and rolled over before falling back asleep. Jim poked him harder.

His mother was still talking. "…At Faneuil Hall having lunch, but I'll bring a sandwich for you, honey."

"I don't want a sandwich," Jim said. "I just ate."

"We'll bring a sandwich," his mother forged onward. "You need to eat more. Your brother was quite the athlete when he was in school." She sighed. "Well, I suppose my side of the family is all delicate, but I thought you would grow up more like your father."

Jim wondered if they shouldn't have just invested in cloning and spared him the misery. His brother had borne the brunt of it because he had been the eldest and the most promising. He'd inherited their father's lantern jaw and jet-black eyes, and their parents had thought he would really go somewhere.

"I'll see you, Mom. Bye," he said and hung up.

"Sssthat?" Mike asked from the floor. He winced as he turned towards the light. "Oh, Jesus."

"Get up, my parents are coming over," Jim said and threw a bath towel on top of him.

Mike groaned. "Again? Man, why don' you just tell them no?"

"I can't," Jim said. "You can go back to sleep in your bed if you want, but they probably shouldn't see you hungover."

"Ugh," Mike muttered and got up clutching the towel. "Nah, should take a shower. Nash call for me while I was out?"

"Yeah," Jim said. "She asked if you want to meet her at two."

"What time is it?"

"A little before one."

"Shit," Mike said and banged out of the room to the hall showers. Jim squashed down a little smile and started the long and arduous process of shoving all his library books under the bed where his father couldn't find them. If he was lucky, his parents would take one look at Mike and assume they had been out partying yesterday. He wondered if he was the only student at college whose parents worried about him partying too little rather than too much.

 

His mother looked like she always did, blonde and wispy with soft hands and the suggestion of vanilla lotion and floral perfume. His father wore a crisp sports coat and offered him a firm handshake and then followed with a more personal clap on the back.

Things started off civil as they usually did. His parents asked about classes and friends, and Jim replied with all the answers they expected, which pleased them. He played the good son and showed his parents around Harvard Square, through the second-hand bookshops and the cafes where students snacked on cheap pizza and strong coffee. His mother bought a pair of ceramic earrings at a jewelry shop that she declared enchanting, and his father nodded in silent approval at the people that waved to Jim. He didn't have the heart to tell his father that they were all people from his various study groups. Eggheads, his father would have called them, but cold weather in Boston made everyone blend together in a parade of coats and scarves, and Jim's friends were indistinguishable from the people his father would have preferred.

The trouble began when Jim ran into Mike and Nash as they were leaving a noodle bar. Nash was a girl from Texas who had moved in with her sister in Boston to see the big city. She had a no-nonsense attitude and an indefatigable smile that Jim liked.

"Hi, Mike," Jim said. He knew his parents liked Mike, so he momentarily let down his guard and missed the way his mother's eyes traced over Mike's arm around Nash's waist.

"Hi, Mr. Halsey. Mrs. Halsey," Mike said and grinned. He had the remnants of a tan leftover from crew team, and his white teeth stood out in an all-American boy smile on his face.

"Sylvia, please," Jim's mother said warmly. "And who is this?"

Jim's insides froze as he realized his mistake, but it was too late.

"Oh," Mike said. "Sorry, this is my girlfriend, Nash."

"Girlfriend, really," Jim's mother cooed. "What a pretty young woman. Jim didn't mention you had a girlfriend. When did you two meet?" Jim's mother asked, and he knew he was in dangerous territory now.

"I work at one of the diners in Harvard Square. Mike asked me to the Quincy House spring formal in April," Nash said.

Mike shrugged. "Jim didn't come with us. He had—" Then he caught himself and shot Jim an apologetic look. "Uh, I mean, he was busy."

"What do you mean?" Jim's father spoke up for the first time.

"Nothing, Dad. Just class," Jim muttered and tried to herd his parents away from Mike and Nash and down the street.

“Class at night?” his dad asked. “What kind of class was this?”

His mother balked as he tried to tug her arm. "Jimmy?"

"We have to go anyway," Mike interrupted and ushered Nash into a record store. Nash turned back to wave at them. "It was nice to meet you." _Sorry_ , she mouthed to Jim, but it the damage was done.

The walk back was silent, and a hot uncomfortable itch settled on the back of Jim's neck. He could see his parents speaking to each other with their eyes, and he didn't dare interrupt them.

"You go ahead," his father said when they reached Quincy House. "I'm staying out here for a smoke before we hit the road."

Jim braced himself as his mother followed him up the stairs and into his room, but she only fussed with his bedsheets, clucked over his pile of dirty laundry, and asked him if he was eating enough. All mildly annoying maternal overtures, that he could respond to with irritated single-syllable replies. He could see she was about to say something, so he fled into the bathroom to exchange his ratty old towels for the fresh ones she had brought.

"Jimmy." She stopped him with a hand on his wrist. "Your great-aunt Valerie didn't marry either." Jim was thrown by the non sequitur. "She and her…friend Sarah lived together in the family summer house on Martha's Vineyard till they died. No children, no one to come to the funeral. So sad. Such a waste."

"Mom?"

She took his hand and gave him a trembling smile, but from the way her eyes shone it was clear she was trying not to cry. "It doesn’t have to be this way. I love you, and I can help you _change_."

Jim pulled his hand out of her grasp. "Mom! It's not like that!"

"Then what's it like?" she asked. "Tell me, honey, because I don't understand."

"There's nothing to understand," he said. "I'm just not interested in anyone."

"No one?" his mother pressed. "Not one? Jimmy, college is one of the last places you'll be surrounded by smart beautiful girls your own age. This is your chance. Don't be shy."

"I'm not shy," Jim said. "Leave me alone."

She stroked his arm. "But honey—"

" _Mom_."

She sighed and looked away. "Fine. Don't listen to your silly old mother." She walked out into the hall and down the stairs. "Alan, let's go."

Jim followed her and tried to catch her arm. "Listen. Please."

"No no," she said and threw up her hands. "You're almost grown now, and it's time you started making your own decisions. I can't be there to rescue you every time."

"I'm not asking you to!" Jim said.

Jim's father was waiting outside and stubbed out his cigarette when he saw them. He looked like he had been expecting this. "Your mother's right. We need to let you make a few bad decisions and suffer a little. It's the only way you'll learn."

"God knows that's where we went wrong with Brian," Jim's mother added.

"Leave Brian out of this!" Jim said. "Brian has nothing to do with me."

"You were always too close to him," his mother said and shook her head. "Even after he lost his job and became…well, we were always afraid you looked up to him too much. We were afraid he would drag you down with him."

"He hasn't!" Jim said and his voice cracked. Brian was the only one that understood what it was like. He was the only one in Jim's corner. "Don't talk about him like that!"

"Don't raise your voice at your mother!" Jim's father barked. "After everything she's done for you, is this how you're going to talk to her?"

"Alan, it's okay," his said and put a hand on his arm. "Jim's getting older now. He doesn't care about his mother anymore."

"That's not true," Jim said. "Mom, Dad, of course that's not true."

"I sacrificed a lot, you know," his mother said. She put a handkerchief to her face. "No, I don't want to make you feel guilty. I shouldn't…but there are a lot of things I gave up so you could have a decent life." She sniffed. "And now, if you just want to throw it all away and end up like your brother, well…I guess I sacrificed for nothing."

"How is not having a girlfriend throwing my life away?" Jim demanded.

"It's not just that," his father said. He grabbed Jim's shoulders. "You don't have a drive to succeed, do you understand? You don't grab opportunities and make something out of it. You're just holed up studying while everyone else is passing you by."

"No," his mother said. She squeezed his father's arm and pulled him away. "Jim's stubborn. He's made his decisions. Let's go."

Jim's father turned back to point at him. "You," he said. "You are going to ruin your life, young man. You listening to me?"

"No, come on," his mother said. "Let's all leave and calm down. We'll call you when we get back to New York, okay, honey?"

"As if he cares," his father burst out.

Jim slammed the front door in their faces.

 Half a dozen heads poked out of the rooms all down the hall as he passed, but he refused to look at them till he was in his room. He flopped down on his bed and knuckled his eyes, grateful that Mike wouldn't be back till late.

"Motherfucker," he groaned. He was in so much trouble.

 

Jim ran into Nash in the basement mailroom the weekend of their first autumn snow. The light passing through the shoveled drifts piling against the windows illuminated her bulky swaddled figure. Nash was mailing Mike’s grandmother the card he’d forgotten to write. The card went on about the sweater Mike and received and how much he liked it, and Nash had done an eerily accurate copy of Mike’s quick slapdash scrawl. It was a good thing for everyone that Nash hadn’t chosen a career in organized crime.

Jim sidled next to her, and she gave his bare arms and t-shirt a disgusted expression. "You know, you could at least pretend to be cold to make me feel better. I stick out like a sore thumb."

"You could have stayed in Texas," Jim pointed out and then laughed when she swatted his shoulder. He wanted to shove his hands in the pockets of his jeans to defrost them but didn't want to give Nash the satisfaction.

Instead, Jim opened his ancient mail slot and extracted a wad of junk mail from pizza delivery places and people running for student council. A colored postcard fell out from the folds of the envelopes.

It was a picture of a rundown drive-in and gas station. The terrain behind it was bare and bleached bone white by the sun, and the sky was an open cloudless blue. It was beautiful in a spare desolate way, and Jim felt the bitterness in him rise to meet it.

The caption at the bottom said _Albert, Texas._ He turned the postcard over but there was no return address on the back. His name and address were written across the front in a broad square hand, and there was a single line underneath: _Hi, kid_.

"John," he whispered. He stared at the picture for a few minutes thinking about crumbling sand and the rough weathered curves of John's hands. John seemed like the kind of man that would be suited to the desert or the long sprawling wilds of the Yosemite. He wondered where John had got his address.

"Huh?" Nash stuck her chin over his shoulder. "Who's John?"

"No one. Just a guy," Jim said and stuck the postcard into the bottom of his jacket pocket.

 

Another postcard arrived in the mail a week later, this one of a giant neon cowboy riding an acid green bull. The cowboy's lasso coiled over his ten gallon hat into the words _'_ Everything's Bigger in Texas _._ '

 _You keep driving and driving, and you never leave this damn state_ , John groused on the back, and Jim smiled.

John never stayed in one place for very long. All of his postcards were bright and cheesy like he'd bought them at gas stations and mom & pops on the side of the road on his way out of one city and into another. Jim didn't know which one he liked better: the four-leaved card from Hoover Dam or the one from Florida with the grinning alligator that arrived in time for Harvard's fall break. There was even one from Niagara Falls (Toronto side, John supplied), when John had gone as far north as he could stand.

Jim encased that particular card in an airtight Minigrip to preserve the rare candid shot of John posing in front of a beautiful panorama of white-water falls with the delicate arches of the Rainbow Bridge peeking through the fog. He must have taken the snapshot at a tourist shack where they put your mug on a postcard to mail off as souvenirs.

 John was standing drenched in a cheap plastic poncho with an arm around a young woman's shoulders. She was cute in a girl-next-door kind of way. Her long strawberry blonde hair was pulled high in a ponytail, and the camera had caught her laughing at the joke spilling from John's parted lips. John's eyes were wicked like he knew a secret he wasn't sharing.

Seeing John's face again was like coming home to his old room in New York after spending a year at Harvard. John's eyes were bluer than he remembered, his hair blonder. The strong lines of his jaw and torso were familiar but awkward when locked in the rigor mortis of the camera. He remembered John best as a blur of motion, his solid frame moving with the grace of someone whose body remembered being quick and slender long ago. Jim recalled the flit of John's mouth, the quick nip of his fingers for a piece of fuzz that had tangled in Jim's hair. John must have been gorgeous when he was young.

That is to say, Jim amended, John looked like he had been a lady-killer. Still was, if the tilt of the young woman's hips and her smile were any evidence. John didn't say anything about her except, _Made a friend in Canada. Her name was Margaret. She reminded me of you_.

Jim was a little intrigued and flattered and incredibly embarrassed that John had taken all the trouble to photograph himself with Jim's doppelganger in the middle of Niagara Falls. He wondered what they had talked about, what joke John had been telling her when the photograph had been taken, if they had gone out somewhere later or John had abandoned her straight after. He wondered if John had been attracted to her.

Jim and his parents reached a stalemate after a few weeks of not speaking to one another. Jim's mother phoned every Sunday to ask him appropriately boring questions about school or the weather, and Jim answered in monosyllables and pretended he went to church. His father refused to talk to him at all. His mother had always been the intermediary in the family, though what she really expected was a full capitulation disguised as a compromise from both parties.

Jim thought about calling his brother, but that made him feel pathetic, because Brian had put up with more than this and worse when he was in Jim's place, and he had never gone crying to Jim. Sometimes Jim wondered if he wasn't making a big deal out of nothing, because every civil conversation he had with his parents made it seem like all of Jim's carefully curated grudges were silly and their past fights had never existed. He knew other kids had worse family problems than parents who were disappointed in them.

On Halloween, John sent him a postcard with the words ‘Sarah Winchester Mystery House’ floating over a picture of a garish oversaturated yellow mansion with a red tile roof. A little informational block of text on the back told Jim that Sarah Winchester of Winchester rifle fame had been afraid that the ghosts of the people killed by her family's guns had returned to haunt her and kill those she loved. A psychic had foreseen that she would be killed the moment she finished building her new house, so Sarah commissioned round-the-clock construction day and night for 38 years. She had died at the old age of 83, leaving behind an eerie sprawling honeycombed mansion.

It was a neat story, Jim thought. He had always been a sucker for haunted houses, probably from a childhood love of Scooby-Doo. Jim wondered if the Halseys had ever killed anyone, because it sure felt like he was being haunted, like there was something just grazing the corner of his eye and the back of his neck whenever he was alone. Nash might have diagnosed it as loneliness, but Jim knew it was apprehension, though for what he couldn’t say.

 _Nice here. Might stay a while_ , it said on the back of the card with the quick scribble of a number and street name in the return address box. It didn't seem like the kind of place John would visit. John wasn’t much of a tourist.

Jim read the message a few times and wondered if John was suggesting something.

He deliberated for two days—he didn't know what John meant by 'a while.' He could have already left San Jose—before buying a sickeningly school-spirited Harvard postcard from the Coop. He frowned at the picture of John Harvard's statue, one foot shiny from the touches of a thousand prospective students, and then mailed it before he lost his nerve. It was only as the mailbox was slamming shut that he realized he had forgotten to write anything.

John didn't say anything about receiving Jim's card, but his next postcard was blank too, and Jim had the distinct impression he was being teased.

 

Jim played Ultimate Frisbee on his free Thursday afternoon with the guys from his math study group. He limped back to his dorm for a punishing hot shower after the sky got too dark and then curled up on the couch in the common room with a pleasant ache radiating down his body. He inspected a long angry grass-stained welt on his shin with satisfaction. He was still unfamiliar with all the rules of the game, but his body was naturally built for sprinting, even if the last two years of long hours and late night junk food had done their best to destroy it.

Someone else's stained coffee mug was on the table, and the television had been left on at a low unintelligible hum. His eyes caught the news bulletin before he even read the words: _Brutal Murder in Des Moines_. Jim turned up the volume.

The ABC Evening reporter onsite said Iowa authorities had declared a statewide missing persons search when a young waitress named Lisa Lapeta had never come home after her shift at the local casino in Altoona on November 16th.

They had found her remains today in an abandoned field beside a stretch of road. Her corpse had been so mangled that medical examiners hadn't let her family identify the body. The reporter's face was ghostly white on camera, and she looked like the barest thread of professionalism was preventing her from being physically sick. Estimated time of death was sometime last week, but leads were scarce because casino patrons were usually tourists that drove through the town on their way to St. Louis or Chicago.

Jim went cold. John had been in Des Moines last week. Oh god, John had _been in Des Moines_ last week.

Mike wasn’t in when Jim tore into their room. The card from John was at the top of the pile in his desk drawer, and he turned it over with shaking hands.  The postage date was November 17th, the day after the murder.

Jim's breath caught, and he put a hand to his chest. His heart was beating a rapid tattoo of _thank god, thank god_ , and he pressed his head back against the wall as he sank to the floor and closed his eyes. He had to remind himself that John was fine—he was in Wisconsin now, complaining about lake-effect snow.

Suddenly he wanted to talk to Brian and didn't know why he had hesitated before. Jim had been notoriously jealous of his friendship with John, even with Mike and Nash. He wasn't afraid his family would dislike John—he didn't think anyone could ever dislike John. He was afraid of the opposite, that his mother would call John charming and his father would invite him for a beer, and John would turn into a friend of the family instead of just a friend of Jim's. Jim didn't feel obligated to share.

But Brian never wanted anything from anyone. Brian wouldn't see John as a piece of leverage against Jim or an advantage to be taken. Maybe opportunism was a recessive family trait.

Jim rose from his cramped bent-kneed sprawl to put away the card and lift the phone from its cradle. His brother picked up on the fourth ring. "Mmyeah, whaddaya want?" he grumbled into Jim's ear.

The tight knot between his shoulder blades eased. "Brian. It's Jim."

"Jim!" His brother brightened. "Hey, guy. How've you been?"

"Ok, I guess." Jim paused, replaying Brian's gentled voice. That was out of character for his brother, who vacillated between cheerful insolence and reluctant civility at the best of times. "You heard about the fight, didn't you?"

"Um. Yeah," Brian admitted, contrite. "Mom actually graced me with a phone call to tell me I was a bad influence, and you had turned into a fag."

Jim gaped. "She _said_ that?"

Brian laughed. "I'm condensing about twenty minutes of screaming and accusations, but yeah, that's what I got out of it. Gotta say, Jimmy-boy, if you wanted to give them the finger, you could have gone about it some other way than being some guy's bitch."

"It's not true," Jim protested.

"Course it isn't true," Brian replied indignantly. "No brother of mine is a godamn cocksucker."

Jim winced and felt his ears turn red. "Um. Thanks." And then icy dread flooded his chest. "Wait, tell me you didn't say that to her."

"You bet," Brian answered back.

Jim was torn between shame and laughter. "Oh my god, was she mad?"

"She hung up on me."

Jim did laugh then. "I must be doing wonders for your public image."

"Nah," Brian said good-naturedly. "Can't let my little brother take the heat. Besides, I can never stay in their good books for long."

"You'll have to teach me how to do that," Jim joked and then sobered. "Hey. You, uh. You hear about Altoona on TV?"

"Don't have a TV," Brian said. "But yeah, I heard about it. Fucked up."

"Yeah. My…" He swallowed. His throat felt thick. "My friend was in town. He could have…I mean, what if he'd—"

"Jimmy?" Brian's suddenly sounded close, like he was sitting right beside him. "He's okay. He's okay, right?"

"Y-Yeah."

Brian's voice was like a hand on his shoulder. "Then you're okay, kid. Breathe."

Jim tried to breathe. And Christ, it wasn't healthy to care so much about a guy he had barely spoken to for an hour. Brian was a stolid presence on the other end of the line. Jim coughed. "Sorry. I'm sorry."

"You worry like mom," Brian said. "Give that friend of yours a big kiss the next time you see him. I bet he'll like that."

"Fuck you," Jim laughed. "Thanks. Thank you. I'll, um, see you at Thanksgiving?"

"Yeah, definitely," Brian said warmly. "I'll be there."

 

Brian didn't show up for Thanksgiving.

"Shop'N'Save needs me. I'm their best bagger," he explained when Jim called him. "People traveling for the holidays, you know. Sorry, buddy."

Jim took the train to New York alone and tried not to feel betrayed.

 The only people that visited for the holidays were his mother's sister's family, who had decided to spend this year in Morocco, and his father's family in Ottawa, who were few in number and reluctant to make the trip south. Jim's father had invited some of his co-workers from Donovan & Bloom Law in their stead, but they milled around sipping martinis and admired the furnishings instead of making conversation. Jim was a little grateful for the formality, because he suspected a cozy private family dinner would have been anything but cozy.

He wondered if John had gone home to his family for Thanksgiving. He wondered if John had mailed him anything for the holidays. The thought settled like an itch under his skin, and he half-resented his parents for keeping him away from Boston with their obligations and trite familial rituals. He had never thought of his airy windowed house as a prison before he had left for Harvard, but now it was both too crowded and too empty, foreign and uncomfortably familiar.

Jim's father encouraged him to network with his firm in hopes of a summer job close to home, but they didn't seem interested in being professionally courted by their colleague's son. One or two of them complained to him about their work hours, the eponymous Mr. Donovan himself regaled him with a long racy tale of his failed affairs, and a tipsy melancholic woman tried to stroke his hair because it reminded her of her ex-husband's.

Jim hid in the kitchen where he was unwanted and a nuisance to his mother, who was irritable from having to hide her smoking habit from her father for the week. 

Jim's grandfather was old school in every sense. He wore a grey double-breasted suit with a striped bowtie and spoke with a soft genteel drawl that surfaced when he introduced himself as being from 'Vuh- _gin_ -yuh' to the lawyers from the firm. He carried a pocket watch hooked to the button of his waistcoat and a silver flask of whiskey in the inside pocket of his jacket. Jim was apparently the spitting image of him when he was a young man, which pleased his grandfather to no end. It was nice—Jim had never been anyone's favorite.

His grandfather had carted up a real Virginia ham to eat alongside the turkey, but his mother had vetoed a full Thanksgiving dinner this year.

"No one likes to feel like a whale," she scolded them and smoothed the sleek lines of her cocktail dress like this was their debut into high society. Instead of cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes, they had delicate shrimp canapés and spinach crostini. Jim felt hungrier afterwards than when he'd started.

His dad and his colleagues retreated into the living room with several cold six-packs to watch the Bears and the Patriots. Jim had a short startlingly pleasant conversation with a woman visiting from D.C. who worked in non-profit. She had dark solemn eyes and a sober expression, and she was a cousin of Bloom, whom she had flown up to visit for the holidays.

She and Jim talked about his classes and a few of the pro-bono cases she was working, although she was careful not to divulge the specific details.

"Mostly I do work for the under-represented," she explained. "People who can't afford lawyers or don't know what options they have when it comes to legal council."

"Oh?" Jim said, interested. "Like what?"

"I've handled a large portion of discrimination cases." she said. "Racism, hate crimes. My last client was a government employee who was fired for living with another woman."

The words fell easily from her lips and into his ears like a clap of thunder, and suddenly she was an alien intruder in a house that was in its essence, a veneration to white picket fences and 2.5 kids and clean conscientious Adam and Eve living. He felt the house rearrange its very molecules at the violation.

Jim checked on his mother from the corner of his eye, but she was laughing with his father and collaring the beer from his hand. "Well," he said slowly, keeping them in his sight. "Maybe Sid Vicious had a point about rejecting pompous authority."

She surprised him with a small quick smile and pulled a business card from the pocket of her conservative pansuit. It said, _Miriam Pryce, Attorney-at-Law_ with an office address for Washington D.C. "Let me know if you're looking for an internship this summer."

"Oh." He knew what his father would say about that. He would say that pro-bono was no way to make a living and idealism had no place in the courtroom. He pocketed the card anyway. "Okay, thank you."

She excused herself with an eyeroll as Bloom yelled at her to come watch the game, and the room felt suffocating the moment she was gone, so Jim liberated a few deviled eggs from the dining table and escaped outside into the unseasonably warm November weather.

"I see you got out on good behavior."

Jim's grandfather was sitting in the disused wooden porch swing with his fingers wrapped around his silver flask. Jim shared one of the deviled eggs, and Jim's grandfather traded him the flask. Jim took a generous swig. It felt like kerosene in his lungs, and he resisted the urge to cough.

"Good man," his grandfather approved. "Glad to see they're teaching you something at that university."

The second sip went down smoother. Jim cleared his throat and wiped his mouth. "What are you doing out here?" he asked.

"Just thinking." His grandfather showed him a blurry black and white family photograph from his wallet. "You never had the big Thanksgiving dinner, did you, Jimmy?"

Jim took the picture from him and studied each face. His grandfather leaned over till Jim could smell the whiskey on his breath. He was a nostalgic drunk. "1933. Momma was gone by that point. Just us and Pa." He pressed his fingers to each face. "That's your Great Uncle Marcus. That's Jake—he died two years ago. And that's me."

"I really do look like you," Jim said with a laugh. It was surreal finding a man in an old photograph wearing an early drape suit and smiling with Jim's own face. "How old were you? Fifteen?"

"Seventeen," his grandfather said. "I was the runt—didn't shoot up for a few years. I'm drowning in Jake's old suit. We didn't have much money for new clothes during the Depression."

Jim pointed to a woman in the middle of the picture. Her face was bright, and one of her slim hands was resting on top Marcus's head. "That's Aunt Valerie, isn't it? Mom's, um…Mom's told me about her."

His grandfather held his eyes for a long moment. "Your mother never knew her, just of her. Val was the eldest. She took care of us. She had the sweetest face you ever saw and a voice like a foghorn. Hell of a woman."

Jim looked back at the photograph and tried to marry his grandfather's version with the terrible picture his mother had spun for him. Valerie looked like she belonged in an Austen novel. Jim wondered why no one had attended her funeral.

 _Fired for living with another woman_ , Miriam Pryce had said, and suddenly Jim was bold. "Mom talked about her friend. Did you know her?"

His grandfather went very still. Then he gave Jim his best professional smile and clapped a hand on his shoulder. "You know, I don't think your father's lawyer friends like me very much."

"Yeah, me neither," Jim agreed. He wondered if he'd misstepped.

"Never liked your father," his grandfather said. “You would have been too young to remember Danny, my eldest. Whip smart, and he could have beaten the devil at poker. You would have liked him. Sylvia never did."

"What happened to him?"

"Motorcycle accident. He was twenty-five." His grandfather grunted and tipped back the flask. He squeezed his eyes shut and smacked his lips. “You kept up with your shooting, boy? Not a lot of deer in your parts, but Harvard’s got a hell of a rifle team.”

Jim was embarrassed. “No, sir.”

“We’ll go tomorrow,” his grandfather promised. “Now go inside and get me some more of this rabbit food."

Jim went back for more deviled eggs and found his mother in the kitchen rinsing out wine glasses and stacking them in the dish washer. She was wearing pristine yellow dish gloves, and her hair was still freshly coiffed. It made him think of her as he'd known her before, a young mother with terrible 70s hair and gentle hands.

Jim pitied her for having to raise two sons, one that looked exactly like her father and another that behaved like him. Like a curse. He wondered if she resented them for receiving more of her father's love than she'd ever had just by virtue of being young lively boys who resembled her long-dead brother. He didn't know what it felt like to be second-best, because his parents had never compared him to Brian back when he'd been the family golden boy. They hadn't really noticed him at all till he'd risen to take Brian's place.

Jim wrapped his arms around his mother's shoulders and dropped a kiss on her cheek. "Hey, Mom."

"Yes?" his mother said. A wine glass fell over in the dish rack, and she tweaked it back into place. "What is it?"

Jim shrugged. "Nothing. It's a nice party. You did a great job."

His mother shrugged him off and rinsed cocktail sauce off a plate. "That's nice, Jimmy. Go see if we need more punch."

 

Jim's mailbox at Harvard was empty when he returned on Monday.

It wasn’t like John was supposed to send him anything for the holidays, Jim told himself with a swell of disappointment as he stomped off the slush on his boots and carried his luggage up to his room. John had just been sending him mail so often that Jim had begun to expect it, and the habitual munificence had spoiled him more than a little.

Their room looked cleaner than he remembered. Mike’s winter jacket was hanging on a doorknob with tiny flakes of snow melting from the hood onto the floor, but Mike was nowhere to be seen.

A card was perched between the tackboard and lamp on Jim’s desk.

Jim dropped his luggage where he stood and snatched it up. Mike must have checked the mail this morning and left it for him. God bless Mike.

 _Welcome to Boston_ , the card said in curly script, and the big block letters of BOSTON were filled with pencil sketches of famous landmarks around the city: Quincy Market, Fenwway, the Commons. That was weird. John only sent him cards from places he'd visited, but Boston had been months and months ago. Why was John sending him the card now?

The back of the card only had a telephone number—Massachusetts area code, which was also weird—but no one picked up when he dialed the number. He hung up after the tenth ring, feeling stupid and wondering who he was supposed to be calling.

He settled on his bed with all of John's postcards and fanned them out in chronological order to trace the route: Texas, the southwest, then a sudden appearance in Florida (John must have flown), the Midwest, Canada, California. John had been everywhere else except the northeast, and that was weird thing number three. Maybe Harvard had been the first leg of his trip.

Jim startled as Mike and Nash banged in with two suitcases, and the neat pile of mail sprayed through his fingers and onto the floor.

"Hey, Jim. How was your Thanksgiving?" Mike asked and then saw the cascade of pictures flowing across Jim's bed. "Whoa. What is that?" He picked up a card that had stopped just in front of his foot.

"It's from his friend John," Nash volunteered, and Jim regretted telling her about it.

"John?" Mike said. "Do I know him?"

"No. He's an alumnus," Jim said, which wasn't strictly true since John hadn't graduated, but he didn't feel like volunteering all the details.

"And he sent you a postcard from the middle of…" Mike checked the card. "Albert, Texas?"

It was the first card John had mailed from Texas, the one with the drive-in and the gas station.

"I think he's kind of lonely," Jim replied, although privately he thought that John was the kind of person who was only lonely if he chose to be. There was something magnetic about his personality that drew people in like iron filings, just like he had drawn Jim.

"What's there to do in Albert, Texas?" Mike wondered. He lifted the post card before Jim could stop him and read the back. Mike's eyebrows came together. "'Hi, kid'? That's kind of weird. Not 'wish you were here' or something?"

"I don't know," Jim said. Texas looked warm and comfortably empty compared to the cold crush of Boston, and maybe a part of him did wish he were anywhere but here. "We aren't that close."

"He sent you a postcard, didn’t he?"

Jim had no idea how John had found his mailing address in the first place. He shrugged noncommittally. "I met him on homecoming weekend in the library."

"Wow. Pretty fast friends," Mike said, and his face asked a series of questions, because Jim wasn't known to talk with strangers or make friends easily.

He fidgeted. Mike and Nash were staring at him like they were on the verge of figuring him out. Jim didn't want to be figured out, so he kept his mouth shut and didn't meet their eyes.

"So," Nash started, and Jim tensed in anticipation, but all she asked was, "When did he graduate?"

Jim gritted his teeth. "He didn't talk about it."

She twiddled her fingers at him. "You could find out."

 

Jim spent two hours that afternoon looking through class rolls at the alumni office because Nash wouldn't stop pestering him till he left to investigate her idea. The Harvard alumni office was shoved into a stuffy closet of a room at the end of a row of offices, and the place stank of mold and book glue. A wall of books dominated the entire back wall, and the woman at the front desk broke the stale silence sporadically with a few pecks at an ancient computer terminal.

The computers only had data from the past three years, and they were still in the process of converting the older paper records. The files were a mess, so Jim leafed through the roll books instead. He had no idea when John had been enrolled, so he went back ten years, then fifteen, and then further to the late fifties when Jim's own father had been a student.

"There's no John Ryder here," the woman at the desk finally dismissed him with a put-upon glare, and he left with hot angry betrayal biting under his skin.

The Valiant had a half-off drink special for the day, and it was overrun with returning college students eager to spend their meager days before the start of classes in an alcoholic haze. Jim's hands curled in involuntary shock around the cool glass of lukewarm beer the bartender pushed into his hands, and he ignored the lingering hopeful gazes of a few slim pretty girls that were drinking by themselves at the bar.

He was three rum-and-cokes deep and on his way to establishing himself as a semi-permanent fixture at the corner bar stool before he finally accepted that John had lied to him all this time, that the alumni records had no whiff of a John Ryder ever attending Harvard, and Jim had been played for a fool since the beginning.

And the worst part, the worst part of all, was that he liked John. He barely knew John, and he liked John's wry humor and quick smile and his effortless charm. Jim wanted to hear stories about leaving college to see the world and taking pictures with strangers just because they reminded him of people he'd left behind. He wanted to give John a chance to explain all this away, but communicating through postcards was no way to reconcile, and Jim would have thought he was corresponding with a ghost if it weren't for John's deft sure handwriting and the memory of his hands cradling Jim's like an entreaty.

Jim emptied his glass and found a man across the bar staring at him, his eyes trailing over Jim like he was drinking him up. A guy had never looked at him like that. The odd thrill of tension underneath Jim's skin was foreign and delicious. The guy looked a little older than Jim—maybe a grad student coming in for a pint before retreating again into self-imposed exile at a laboratory or the library.

Jim paid the tab and walked up to him, and the man turned to intercept him and smiled like Jim was an old friend. The face was wrong, but the small secret smile was right, and Jim felt dizzy and numb."Hi," he said.

"What?" the man shouted and cocked his head. Jim took the invitation and stepped into his space.

"You remind me of someone," Jim shouted in his ear.

The man pressed a hand against Jim's waist as he leaned closer. The bar was packed. They were practically standing on each other's toes. "What was that?"

Jim cupped a hand around the man's ear. "I said that you remind me of someone."

The man's breath was warm and stank of beer and gum. "That so?"

Someone jostled past them, and they stepped away in tandem like a pair of awkward dancers. The wall of bodies herded them into a niche where the walls joined at three awkward angles to accommodate the water heater. Jim plastered them against the drywall, their knees and shoulders protesting where they tried to fit together.

"What's your name?" the man asked but couldn't hear Jim's repeated attempts over the music and finally shook his head with a rueful tap to his earlobe.

Jim slid closer. The man's knee was between his legs now. "What is this music?" he bellowed.

"Santanta. Abraxas."

"I like it," Jim declared. "It's nice."

"You're nice too," the guy said.

The hands bracketing Jim's hips steadied him like an anchor, and he felt the barest touch of fingertips on the strip of skin just underneath his shirt. And then suddenly, Jim was gasping for a mouthful of stale sticky air, and his hands were fisted in the man's jacket. He didn't know what he was doing. He was drunk. He had to get out of here.

"I'm sorry, I have to go," Jim blundered and wrenched away. He blinked, and the room came back into focus. "I'm sorry. I…I don't feel well."

"Hey, wait—" the man said and reached for him, but Jim dodged and pulled his peacoat firmly around his body.

Mike was staying with Nash for the night, and Jim stumbled like an elephant into their hall bathroom in his heavy boots and scattered bits of sand and salt everywhere.

Jim was an efficient drunk. He threw up neatly into the toilet, brushed his teeth twice, and then took a long cool shower that made his skin feel as numb as the rest of him. His pajamas were wrinkled and chilled from his suitcase.

John's number still rang and rang like a Gregorian chant in his ear until the sound finally lulled him to sleep.

 

Jim woke up in the middle of the night to a dark figure looming over him. He jumped and pressed a hand over his heart. "Jesus!"

"Hi, kid," John Ryder said.

"The hell are you doing here?" Jim hissed and staggered upright. The phone was still tucked against his stomach. "Turn on a light, for godsake!"

"I was just about to," John said and obediently flicked on Jim's beside lamp. "Didn't know whether to wake you up or let you sleep. You left the door open."

"Did I? I don't remember."  Then John’s hair lit up as he stepped into the pool of yellow light, and Jim stifled a gasp. That was what had been nagging him—John looked like the man at the club. Or maybe the man had looked like John, and that was why Jim had been drawn to him.

The bed squeaked as John sat down beside him. "It's late. I'm tired." John said and leaned over to rest his head on Jim's shoulder.

Jim shrugged him off. "Quit kidding around."

“I’m not kidding,” John said. “Mind if I sleep here tonight?”

“What?” Jim said and looked across the room at Mike's empty bed. He didn't think Mike would appreciate finding some stranger asleep there in the morning. "What about a hotel?"

"It was a little short notice."

"Must have been pretty short notice," Jim sniped. His stomach was protesting the onslaught of beer and severe lack of food.

John just hmmed and gave him a slow half-smile. "You look good," he said. "You been keeping busy?"

"I looked through the alumni directory after you left," Jim said. He could feel the corner of his lip curling back into a snarl.

John looked unperturbed. "Did you, now?"

"Oh, yeah. They told me there was no John Ryder in the system."

John shrugged. "The computer system was before my time. I should be in the old books. Not the roll, the class registrars. Did you check those?"

That caught Jim off-guard. "No."

John shrugged. "Ah, well. They wouldn't hang onto those anyway."

Now Jim felt silly. "Oh. I guess not. Sorry."

John waved it away and then leaned close. "No. You ought to be suspicious. I'm keeping secrets."

Jim mimicked his clandestine pose. He sensed the beginning of a joke. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Then John grinned and leaned back against Jim's headboard. They were sitting side by side like sardines. "I'm the class of '70. Didn't want to tell you that I was an old dinosaur."

Jim snorted. "I'm the class of 86," he said quietly.

John gave him a ghoulish smile. “Yeah, I know.”

The hair on Jim’s arms prickled. “You can stay. You can always stay here,” he said in a rush. “How long are you in Boston?”

John wasn't quite right in the head. John was nothing like the people at Harvard, and he definitely wasn't the kind of man his father would have liked. He was stranger than Jim could comprehend and more mysterious than he was strictly comfortable with, and Jim wanted to see him again.

John tilted his head back like he was sunning himself in the flood of Jim’s desk lamp. “I reckon you’ll see me here and there. You’re the only friend I have in the world, Jimmy."

"Oh, come on. That can't be true," Jim protested. "You're good at talking to people. I saw you and what's-her-name in Canada. My doppelganger."

John looked pleased. "You got that card?"

"I got all your cards." Jim slid off the bed to retrieve them from his desk. He almost fell. He was still drunk, and it was—he looked at the clock—Jesus, it was three in the morning.

John caught him with a hand around his ankle and dragged him back like a fish. They negotiated the tiny bedspace till they were sitting up with their legs stretched out in front of them, Jim's lone pillow squashed somewhere underneath his elbow.

"They're out of order," Jim apologized as he fanned the cards out.

"You got my Boston card, huh?" John thumbed a piece of hair out of Jim's eyes. "You had a piece of fuzz," he explained, and they both laughed.

Jim settled against him. John's thigh next to his radiated warmth and companionship. Jim felt a wave of hazy affection for him. "I tried calling that telephone number. You didn't pick up."

"Didn't realize you were away on vacation," John said. "I was long gone by then."

"If you had stuck around till I called, you would have known when I was back in town," Jim said. "Lucky you stopped by when I was around."

"Lucky," John agreed.

Jim's head lolled on John's shoulder, and he closed his eyes. John could deal with it—it was his damn fault that Jim was sleepy and drunk. "Tell me about Toronto," he mumbled. "Why did you say that girl reminded you of me?"

"She told me she didn't talk to strangers either," John said. "She was sweet."

Jim laughed. "You think I'm sweet?"

John studied him. "You're so sweet that I think it'll get you in trouble one of these days."

Jim thought about the man at the bar. The press of John's arm blotted out the memory of the man's body against his. "You don't have to worry about me."

"Oh, but I do," John argued. "I know your kind of people. Have to keep an eye on you."

“You’d better watch out, John,” Jim cracked back and then yawned. John's corduroy jacket felt good against his cheek, and the cards were scattered between them like a telephone line. "Mm, what about California? You said you were staying there for a while."

John gently ruffled his hair, and Jim didn't have the energy to shake him off. "California was nice. Nice weather, friendly people. You would love it. The beaches are real pretty."

Jim thought of Brian reading to him before bed when they were both kids and Jim's favorite book had been Matthew Looney and the Space Pirates. John was talking to him about watching vineyards being built in Napa Valley and girls in bikinis rollerblading down the boardwalks of San Diego.

Sometime during the night, he felt hands around his knees and shoulders lifting him up and arranging him into a comfortable position. The susurrus of blankets being tucked around him . He felt warm and safe—god, he felt so safe that he was sinking into the bed and drowning in it.

John was gone when he woke up the next day, and Mike's sheets and blankets were cooling in a soft tangled cocoon on the floor next to Jim's bed. The Boston card was lying on the pillow with another phone number written underneath the first.

 

The alumni office finally unearthed a folder labeled John Ryder, 1971, and Jim slipped it out from the cabinet with the childish subcutaneous thrill of doing something selfish and risky. He squirreled it away into the back of his dresser where it burned like a brand every day as it waited for him to open it.

There would come a time, Jim decided. A time when impinging on John's privacy would be necessary. He hoped that day never came.


	2. Chapter 2

John was back in Boston in January after rattling around Cape Code for the holidays. Jim told him he had picked the wrong time to commune with the northeast.

"Someone has to feed you up and keep you alive till you take those exams," John said, referring to the LSATs Jim had been losing sleep over.

They were at Bobby's at 11AM for Sunday brunch because John took some perverse vicarious pleasure in watching Jim put away a stack of pancakes and a medically inadvisable amount of coffee.

"There's a logic puzzles section," Jim explained as he drew patterns through the syrup on his pate. "They want to test your critical thinking."

"What kind of logic?" John asked.

"You know," Jim said. "Mary doesn't drive a blue car and lives next to Tom. One of Tom's neighbors has a motorcycle."

"Awful things, motorcycles," John remarked. "Noisy as hell."

"My mom says they're death traps," Jim said and thought of his late uncle Danny who his grandfather still mourned and his mother had never mentioned.

"Why?" John said. "It's a single-person vehicle. In my experience, it's other people you have to watch out for."

"Mm," Jim said around another forkful of pancakes. He pushed his plate forward so John could steal a bite while he waited for his eggs and toast. "I remember when I was first starting to drive, my dad saw something that looked like an animal in the middle of the road and reached over to jerk the steering wheel. Nearly killed both of us."

"That's exactly what I'm talking about."

"It turned out to be a grocery bag."

John laughed and touched two fingers to the back of Jim's hand. John was a touchy-feely guy. Jim was learning not to flinch whenever John reached for him, and he was rewarded with John's slow smiles and the warm press of his hand around one of Jim's biceps. The loose circle of John's fingers around his wrist were a benediction, not meant to constrict or hinder him, just a reminder that Jim wasn't alone.

"You don't get hitchhikers when you're on a motorcycle, that's for sure," Jim said. "I feel bad driving past them in the middle of nowhere with three empty seats in my car."

"I always wonder how they got out there in the first place,” John remarked, looking pensive.

Their server came by with John’s eggs and toast and filled his coffee cup for the umpteenth time with a wry little smile. John grinned back like a shark and raised his mug.

Jim was no fool. He knew that they sometimes went to nook-and-cranny pubs in Boylston with a very specific male clientele. Sometimes men lingered by their table and spoke to John in a way that was both entirely innocent and full of intent, a delicate complicated nuance that would have been hellishly useful in a court of law. Sometime they spared Jim a guilty sideways glance before going back to John, always John. Not that Jim could blame them. John was smooth and confident where Jim was nervous and so painfully young, and it didn't matter that neither of them was gay.

Jim had been uncomfortable with the attention and then curious. He wondered what people thought of him, thought of _them_ sitting together over lunch for hours talking about nothing in particular.

The brunch crowd was coming in now. Hungover wary-eyed men and tall statuesque women in bright glittery clothes and makeup. Jim watched them and drummed his fingers against his thigh.

"Why do you go to these places?" he asked.

John shrugged. "I get left alone."

"Are you kidding me? No way," Jim blurted and then felt his ears go hot.

John laughed and chucked him under the chin. "You think I've still got it, kiddo?"

"I think you're selling yourself short," Jim said and congratulated himself on his nonchalance. He didn't believe for a second that people left someone as handsome as John alone.

"Why, Jimmy. I'm flattered." John gutted his eggs over easy and let the yolks bleed out into his bacon and toast. John always ate like a massacre, leaving smears of sauce and food tumbled across his plate. Jim disapproved, but then, Jim's mother had schooled him since he was a child to eat like he was excavating his food—slowly, meticulously. Mike teased him about it, but John watched him in fascination. Everything about him seemed to fascinate John, and that was both flattering and incredibly unnerving.

 Jim cut his leftover pancakes into a grid without ravaging the slices of strawberries. He could feel John watching and went over the edges of his plate with his thumb to lift crumbs into his mouth. Maybe Jim liked showing off a little.

"You would be a good surgeon," John said. "You're precise. You're good with a knife."

Jim warmed at the compliment. "Not that great with people."

"They're usually unconscious," John reminded him.

"Stops them from complaining," Jim said, and they laughed. John pilfered a half-eaten pancake out from under Jim’s fork and tore into it with a sideways swipe of his jaw like he was taking down a gazelle on the savannah. John was practically carnivorous.

Jim tried to scowl at him, but he liked John too much for that. "What big teeth you have.”

John licked a floret of whipped cream off the tines of his fork with satisfaction. "Every fairytale has a moral."

"What was that one? Don't talk to strangers?" Jim asked. He nudged John's foot under the table. "Worked out pretty well for me."

John grinned, slow and toothy. "The point of the story was, you never recognize wolves when you meet them."

 

Mike and Nash broke up, got back together, and broke up again. Jim played the dutiful friend and accompanied Mike to bars on Friday nights when he felt lonely. He could brave the Valiant again with Mike a stolid weight at his side.

Jim never told John, but he once went to the bars by himself on a Friday evening when cigarette smoke, loud disco music, and men in tight jeans spilled out of the doors. Jim felt completely out of place in his best khakis and an old polo shirt that had shrunk in the wash and was a little too tight around his arms and waist. The collar was strangling him, and some of the guys standing next to the jukebox were staring, so he ordered a beer at the bar with a quick flick of his fingers.

The bartender turned out to be one of the regular servers that waited tables at the brunch place across the street where he and John went out on Sundays. "You're the guy that comes in with John Ryder, aren’t you?" the bartender said.

Jim was surprised. "You know him?"

"Nah," the bartender said. "But you guys come in regular, and his name's on the bill.” He looked over Jim’s head and continued, “Have to say, I almost didn’t recognize you without him. You two are sort of a fixture.”

“John’s in Rhode Island,” Jim replied, and when he turned around to see what the bartender had been glaring at, the guys at the jukebox didn’t meet his eyes.

Everyone steered clear of Jim for the rest of the night. He wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved.

 

Jim went through his spring semester classes feeling like a ghost. He attended class and wrote up the papers from muscle memory, and if his advisor accused him of being a little distant, Jim's steady grades didn't give her a leg to stand on. That didn't stop her from listing all the ways Jim was a melancholy young man and what he should do about it. Jim made excuses about deadlines and escaped before she could get very far.

He didn't think of himself as melancholy. Discontent, maybe, but that was the natural avatar of the typical college student. Their lives were an exercise in greed and apathy: not enough food and too much work. Not enough time and too many rules. Jim couldn't name a single person at Harvard who could claim they were happy. They wouldn't have been in college struggling to make something of themselves if they were happy. They wouldn't have been so desperate to change, to drink themselves stupid and pretend to be other people.

"Are you happy with your life?" Jim asked Mike over lunch the next day.

"I don't know, man. Who gives a fuck?" Mike grumbled, articulating an entire generation's worth of aggrieved twenty-something philosophy.

 

There was another murder in Allentown, Pennsylvania. A young man, a college student. Ripped to shreds and left on the side of the highway beside his car like roadkill. Jim wondered if there had been a strange spike in murders recently or it just seemed that way because he had started paying attention to them.

 

A rally was going on in the grass in front of the library as Jim was cutting through to get to Ultimate Frisbee. A group of students were handing out flyers to students on their way to class. They had strung large rainbow banners on poles, and two guys were standing underneath with their arms around each other. They were both wearing shirts that said 'WE'RE HERE, WE'RE QUEER, GET USED TO IT' in electric pink capitals.

Jim cut across the stone paths to avoid them. A girl with short spiky hair was distributing handbills up ahead, and Jim shoved his hands into his pockets and kept his eyes to the ground.

"Support queer rights?" he heard her say as he approached. "Support queer rights? Stand up for equality?" and he suspected that last one had been directed at him, but he said nothing and kept walking past.

He reached the field early enough to start for the first game. He intercepted two passes early and almost scored a point before getting body checked by one of defenders who was in his comparative politics class. Sweat misted at Jim's temples and prickled with salt at the corners of his mouth. The shallow grass burns on his knees stung as sweet as a kiss.

Nash still wasn't answering Mike's calls, and the first exams of the semester were almost upon them. In a fit of early onset senioritis, Jim was joining the Ultimate Frisbee rec league after class instead of staying in the library. Frisbee reduced him to a simple pair of arms and legs and their everyday mechanics. His body knew how to jump and catch and dodge without instruction.

Jim cut around an opposing player and extended a hand to the thrower to indicate he was open. His eyes skimmed down the sidelines where a few spectators had gathered. A figure in a dark windcheater was watching them on the sidelines with his hands in his pockets. He was tall with broad shoulders, and his face was shadowed by a red baseball cap. Jim slowed to catch a better glimpse of him.

"John?" he murmured and then a sharp blow knocked him sideways. He stumbled and fell, a sea of churning feet dangerously close to his face. He curled in and rolled away on instinct, but someone's shoe caught his cheek, and pain drove the breath from his body.

"Hey! Hey!" someone shouted when he noticed Jim wasn't getting up. The feet subsided, and then Jim was being hauled up.

"You're ok, right?" the guy said. "I'm sorry, I tried to stop in time." He craned to look at Jim's face and then whistled. "That'll be some shiner. You still playing?"

"Um." Jim looked over the figure, who had now taken off his baseball cap and was chatting with one of the girls getting out of class.

It wasn't John. He didn't look like John at all.

"Yeah," Jim said. He traced his tongue along the cut on the side of his lip where his own tooth must have caught it. "It's fine. I'm in."

The bruise looked even worse the next morning, an ugly blue and purple thing wrapping up from his chin to his jaw. The skin was puffy and tender to the touch, even when Jim tried to settle a crushed ice pack against it to subside the swelling.

"You look like you've been beaten up," Mike told him, looking cheerful for the first time in weeks. Mike’s streak of schadenfreude was a new development.

"I'll beat _you_ up," Jim muttered and hoped the bruise would subside before John stopped by on the way up from Atlantic City.

Jim knew the bruise would upset him. John was incredibly protective, sometimes to the point of absurdity. John took him out to eat every time and refused Jim's money when the bill came. He wrapped his fingers around Jim's elbow when they crossed the street and made a point to always walk him back to his dorm even in the broad afternoon daylight when the most Jim had to worry about were the squirrels. John was a good guy.

Jim had been rehearsing a calm rational explanation for the bruise in his head for days, but he forgot all of it when the door to his room opened, and John walked in with a bag of saltwater taffy. Jim looked up, forgetting to favor his good side.

John took one look at the spreading bruise across Jim's face and went preternaturally still, his fingers tightening on the bag of taffy till it threatened to burst. His face was like thunder.

"John," Jim said brightly and stood. "I, uh. I wasn't expecting you so early. Is that taffy?"

"Who did that to you?" John said quietly. His eyes were terrible—flinty and glittering like ice. They sliced through Jim like a knife.

Jim took an involuntary step back. "I…"

"Kid, hey." John's hands were gentle as they cupped his face, his thumb lingering just beside the healing cut at the corner of his mouth. "Who did this to you?"

"It was an accident," Jim said. "Ultimate Frisbee. I collided with someone, got kicked in the face."

“Oh, Jimmy boy,” John sighed. Then John was skimming over his biceps, his spine, the back of his neck, as if John were checking for more hidden injuries.

Jim was overwhelmed by a memory of himself at five years old when his mother had coddled his cuts and bruises like he was as precious and delicate as her prize Chrysler Imperial roses. He didn’t recognize the woman now who wore his mother’s face and barely spoke to him.

Jim's eyes dropped to the brightly colored bag of taffy on his desk. He loved taffy. He hadn't eaten it for years, and he was touched that John had known that, however accidentally. "John," he murmured, feeling drowsy." Are you happy now? I mean, after college?"

John's hands stilled. "Why? Trying to find something to look forward to?"

"No." Yes, that was exactly what he'd been doing. "Just want to know that all of this is worth it."

"Let me tell you a secret." John's breath was warm against Jim's ear. Jim titled his head to feel the barest brush of John's lips. He felt John smile. "This world doesn't owe you shit."

Jim recoiled, stung. "What?"

John pinioned him with his body against the desk. "What? You wanted me to say 'honey, don't worry. Everything will be okay'?"

"What—" Jim tried to shove him away, but John caught his arms. "What is wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with you?" John dug his thumbs into the soft hollows of Jim's wrists. "Let me tell you something, kiddo. In this world, you take what you want. No one's going to give it to you because you _deserve_ it. Do you want a pat on the head because you're sweet? Because you do the extra credit and eat your vegetables?"

"No!" Jim snarled.

"Yes, you do," John told him. "Don't lie to me. Say it."

Jim squeezed his eyes shut. " _John_."

John let go of one of his arms to grab his hair and pull his head back, baring his throat. "Say it."

And suddenly, Jim was _angry._ He put his weight against the desk and used what precious little leverage he had to swing forward with his free hand.

He hadn't meant to punch so hard.

John pitched sideways like a bowling pin, one hand to his face. Jim felt a small thrill go through him—and was this what John had meant?—before John's nose began trickling blood.

"Oh my god." Jim's hands hovered in a frantic indecisive halo around John's crouched figure. "John? I'm sorry. Jesus, I thought you were—" He didn't have any excuses. He had been an asshole. "I'm sorry, I didn't know what I thought."

"Good," John said nasally and rose, pinching his nostrils closed. "Good for you, kid. That's more like it." He accepted the wad of toilet paper Jim pressed into his hands and tried to staunch the blood. He poked his own nose with a finger and winced. "God, where did you learn to punch like that?"

Jim waved his arms and then settled one on John's forearm. "My brother. John, I'm so sorry."

"Don't apologize. I knew you were a scrapper." John’s eyes hardened as they snagged onto Jim’s bruises again. "No one else hurts you."

"My dad would say it makes you—"

"No one else hurts you," John repeated fiercely. He rested his hand high on Jim's stomach. It was proprietary and protective. Jim had never felt protected before.

"Don't say things you don't mean to back up," he said shakily.

"I don't," John said and bared his teeth in a way that was both reassuring and unsettling with the blood drying across his lip. "I won't promise you that everything will be ok or that I'll take care of you."

"Good," Jim spat. "Don't you ever promise me that, John. Not ever."

John's nose swelled and purpled in a gross parody of Jim's face, and they laughed about it over the bag of saltwater taffy. John ended up on Jim's bed with a cold dishtowel held against the bridge of his nose, and Jim leaned back in his desk chair and sprawled his feet across John's.

"Are you going anywhere for spring break?" John asked. His fingers were circling the knob of Jim's ankle.

"I'm driving up to see my brother," Jim replied quickly, because he suspected John was about to ask him to come with him, and Jim didn't think he could say no.

For a moment, he thought John was going to ask anyway, but instead he just said, "Where does he live?"

Jim breathed a sigh of relief. "Cascade Falls, New Hampshire."

"How long will you be there?"

"All week." And then, because he felt guilty, "Maybe I can call you when I'm there. My brother has a phone."

"I'll call you," John said. "Give me the number."

Jim tore out a piece of paper, wrote it down, and watched John fold it twice and tuck it into his wallet. "When will you call?" Jim asked.

"Don't know, but you should pick up when I do." John leaned forward, and Jim's feet slid out of his lap. He wrapped his hands around Jim's shoulders and squeezed. "Will you pick up, Jim?"

It was one of the first times John had called him by his real first name instead of 'kid' or 'Jimmy' or any other pet name that Jim disliked.

"Yes," Jim said. "I promise."

John stepped closer, his hold on Jim's shoulders becoming strangely intimate. "You're driving, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Jim murmured. “I’m renting a car.”

John drummed a finger against Jim's collarbone. "Don't go picking up hitchhikers, you hear? It's dangerous."

"Okay, I won't," Jim replied absently. He wondered if the smell of John's cologne would linger in his bed after he left. If the pillow would be warm from the press of John's back. Suddenly, New Hampshire seemed hundreds of miles away, and Jim didn't want to leave.

 

The towns dwindled and the forests flourished like their own cities as Jim drove north. Brian lived in a cozy milled log one-story at the edge of town and was waiting by the mailbox as Jim drove up. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in days, and his breath stank of beer when he slid into the passenger seat and pulled Jim into a hug.

"You started drinking early," Jim accused. "It's only three o’clock, Brian. Jesus."

"Not working today." Brian said and thumped the dashboard with a fist. "Jesus, this is an ugly driveaway. Want me to run inside and get you a beer?"

Jim frowned. "I’m driving."

"It's fine," Brian said. "There's never anyone on the roads. We are in the middle of nowhere, Jimmy."

"All the same," Jim said. "I'd better not."

"Have it your way, Mom," Brian grumbled. "Come on—I need groceries, and then we’re going out to the Comstocks for dinner. They just built a new addition to their house, so they’re having a party.”

“A party?” Jim looked down at his wrinkled plaid shirt with a faded stain where he’d splashed a tube of soy sauce. He wished Brian would at least invite him in for a cup of coffee. “Should I change?”

Brian laughed at him. “Don’t be stupid. This ain’t one of your fancy Harvard get togethers. You don’t need to show up in your best little cocktail dress.”

Jim opened his mouth to say that until Brian had been kicked out of Harvard, he had loved those parties. The little cheese trays and wine, the women in modern asymmetrical dresses and the men in blazers and ties. Jim had once believed that Brian had been leading the perfect life, and he’d screwed it up. Jim wondered now if Brian had been looking for excuses to screw it up all along.

Jim showed up to the Comstocks with a case of beer he’d bought in town and was bundled inside their pristine cookie cutter house for slabs of lasagna that were as big and dense as bricks. The lasagna left strings of cheese hanging off his lower lip that solidified like hairs in the chilly spring air when he followed Brian back out to the backyard where other people had started to congregate.

They sprawled out on the back steps of the wraparound porch and watched the Comstocks’ monstrous drooling Newfoundland let herself be chased by a gaggle of screaming children that looked like they could have ridden around on her. Jim laughed as she dodged through a line of tiki torches staked into the dirt with a huge doofy grin on her face. She looked like she was having a good time, though it was hard to tell through all the fur.

Brian leaned back on his elbows. “I’ve been thinking about getting a dog. We couldn’t have one when we were kids.”

“You know Mom’s allergic,” Jim replied.

Brian snorted. “Mom was allergic to anything she didn’t like. Remember when you bought that green Members Only jacket, and she said the dye gave her hives.”

“I still miss that jacket,” Jim murmured. He squinted at the powerful disheveled lines of the Newfoundland.  “Can you take care of a dog? sThey’re a lot of responsibility.”

Brian’s face darkened. “Took care of you, didn’t I? You calling me irresponsible, Jimmy?”

“No, of course not,” Jim murmured and studied the tops of his shoes. “I’m sorry.”

“God, you’re just like Mom and Dad sometimes,” Brian muttered, and Jim knew he didn’t mean it, but it stung.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Jim replied.

Brian huffed and shouldered into his side like a linebacker, and Jim pulled his ears in retaliation. Brian had played football in high school, and Jim had gone to every single one of his games.

The dog finally flopped down panting in front of Mrs. Comstock and let herself be petted and praised. Brian got up for another beer but was stopped every few steps to say hi to someone he knew and kiss their wives on the cheek. It was nice to see Brian was popular here.

Jim finished his food just as Brian returned with a young smiling man with hair so pale that it looked white. He was built like most people in Cascade Falls—tall and sturdy with ruddy windburned cheeks.

"I didn’t know Brian Halsey’s kid brother was in town," the guy said and then wrinkled his nose. “Sorry, you probably hate being called that.”

"You kidding? He’s a pipsqueak," Brian said. "This is my little brother Jim. He's come up from Boston to visit. Jim, this is Ralph. He owns a video store downtown."

Ralph laughed. “The only video store in town.”

“Oh.” Jim jumped up to shake hands and almost upended the greasy paper plate balanced across his knees. Ralph’s fingers were cold. “Yeah. Hi. Nice to meet you.”

Brian flapped a dismissive hand. “Yeah yeah, you kids make nice. I need to go see my betting pool. You be good, Jimmy. Back in a few—“

“Brian, I don’t—“ Jim started, but Brian just tousled Jim’s hair with blunt careless force that made his neck ache, and then disappeared into a knot of men wearing steel-toed boots and corduroy jackets. His gait was unsteady.

Jim turned to find Ralph scrutinizing him with narrowed eyes. “Your brother sure does like to drink.”

Jim bristled. “Is that a problem?”

Ralph held up his hands. “No, not at all. Hey, you want to see the garden?”

So they wandered back to the frozen plots of loam and trellises entwined with the crucified husks of tomato vines. Ralph said the Comstocks owned two square miles of property, including the woods. Ralph himself had moved from the next town over about ten years ago—compared to his old place, Cascade Falls was practically a city—but he had driven into Boston on occasion and had seen the sights.

Jim listened with half an ear and glanced back at Brian's betting pool, looking for his broad back. Had Ralph been suggesting that Brian had a drinking problem? Sure, Brian had a few too many sometimes and acted like a jerk, but the incidents were far and few between, and Brian was always sorry when he sobered up again. Brian deserved some slack, after all. He had probably never expected he would be living in the high rural parts of New Hampshire in a town with enough collective buildings to fit inside Davis Square.

“—some nice places for a drink in Back Bay too," Ralph was saying, and without thinking, Jim answered, "Yeah, the roofdeck at the Loft is nice."

Ralph stared at him with huge dark eyes, his mouth open in a startled 'o.'

Jim tried to backpeddle. "I mean. We just--"

"Yeah," Ralph said breathlessly. “The Loft is great.” His eyes swept the deserted garden, and then he ducked to rub the back of his neck. "I, um. I didn’t know…Brian mentioned you didn’t have a girlfriend.”

“I haven’t had time,” Jim argued. "I’ve been busy applying to law school soon."

Ralph was nodding along. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I do. Stay busy, keep your head down. No one bothers trying to figure you out.”

“Not much to figure out,” Jim replied.

Ralph laughed. “Sure, sure.” He nodded back to the house. “Your brother know? Wait, what am I talking about? Of course he doesn’t know.”

Fear swooped through Jim’s chest, but he kept his expression frosty. He didn’t understand exactly how much there was to know, but Brian had to stay out of it. “I think it’s best we keep it that way.”

Ralph nodded and mimed zipping his lips. “He tries to do right by you, you know. More than he tries with anyone else.”

Jim opened his mouth to be insulted on Brian’s behalf when it occurred to him that this stranger from a small town probably knew more about Brian than Jim did now. “He’s changed, hasn’t he?”

“Don’t know. I never knew him from before.” Ralph wrinkled his nose in sympathy. “Must be hard for you.”

“He’s family.” Jim watched people on the lawn file into the house with their plates and glasses. The cheap tiki torches blazed in the oncoming dusk. “I think they’re doing a tour of the house. We should head back.”

"It gets so lonely here, you have no idea," Ralph said, and Jim guessed he wasn't talking about the long cold winters.

“I can imagine,” Jim replied and let Ralph’s fingers brush his elbow for a brief moment.

"We could go to the movies or something," Ralph murmured, and Jim felt like he was drowning in water just a few inches about his head. He had no idea how to respond to anything Ralph was saying.

"I can't," Jim said finally and nodded towards his brother, who was sprawled against the porch railing waving feebly at people as they passed. "I have to see about Brian."

It was a pathetic excuse, and Jim was relieved when Ralph nodded. "Yeah, I understand. You're a good brother." He clapped Jim on the shoulder, and his hand lingered for a moment too long. "Maybe some other time."

"Sure," Jim said and then felt sorry for him. "I’m staying with Brian all week. Just call me."

Ralph brightened. "Yeah, I will."

 

The days in New Hampshire seemed shorter. Jim woke up late and went to bed early when the evening sky was so black that his body convinced itself that it was after midnight.

 “You’re lazier than I remember,” Brian laughed at Jim when he stumbled down for a late breakfast. Brian had early hours at the supermarket and often worked the closing shift at the hardware store. He had taken the week off for Jim, but once in a while they had to call him in for an emergency, and Jim woke up to an empty house that seemed smaller without Brian’s booming voice and loud footsteps.

Breakfast today was a plate of cold store-bought danishes. Jim curled into the seat across from Brian and tried not to get crumbs everywhere. He glanced at the phone in Brian’s kitchen, the teal plastic bleached almost white from the sun. “By the way, has anyone called for me?”

Brian didn’t look up from his newspaper. “You’ve asked me that question every day since you got here. You got a secret girlfriend or something?” He flipped down a corner of the sports section, his eyes knowing. “Oh hell, you _do_. Jimmy, you dog. Is she hot?”

Jim shook his head. “Nothing like that. Just. Mike. You know, roommates checking in. Guess he forgot.”

Brian frowned, uninterested again. “That’s some buddy system you’ve got.” He turned another page. “Though I guess I don’t blame you with all the freaky murders that have been happening around here.”

Jim choked. “What?”

Brian rifled through the newspaper and showed him the headline: _Man’s Head Found in Ice_.

Jim pulled it closer and scanned the article. “This was in Concord.”

“Didn’t find him till the pond had thawed,” Brian replied. “Who knows how long he’d been there.” He stole the Danish from Jim’s hand and squeezed it so the raspberry filling burbled out. “Still hungry, little brother?”

Jim glared at him, grabbed the pastry back, and shoved it in his mouth.

 

Brian made some half-hearted attempts to play the good local tour guide and get them both out of the house, and Jim languished on the deflated living room couch waiting for John to call. It would be just his luck to miss John the moment he was away, and he didn’t like to think of John going through all that trouble for nothing. He’d looked so painfully earnest when Jim had promised to pick up.

Jim kept an ear out all the time, even when he was in the shower or watching The Price is Right with Brian. Sometimes he imagined the phone was sucking in a huge breath in anticipation of a loud brassy peal just as Jim was almost out the door.  

His ears began ringing with phantom bells. At night he dreamed of the kitchen phone ringing and ringing like a siren song. He dreamed of floating down the staircase, his feet barely brushing the steps, his limbs moving like he was wading through pancake syrup.

The phone seemed to ring for hours as it waited for Jim to drift into the dim kitchen and press the receiver against his ear.

“Hello?” he said.

He never remembered the voice on the other end.

 

They had a freak snowstorm in the middle of the week, and Brian woke him up at some hellish hour of the morning so they could drive around in Brian’s pickup and plow the roads. Brian had a contract with a small residential neighborhood a few miles east and some other individual customers who called him over to clean their driveways.

Once or twice they were invited in for hot chocolate or coffee because this was a town where everyone knew everyone, and Brian tugged him close and declared, “This is my brother,” with so much pride that Jim was grateful his face was already pink from the cold.

It warmed up by the time they drove back home, and he and Brian had a late afternoon lunch of canned chowder and barely stale bread rolls as they listened to the tap tap of melting snow against the windows.

“Wash out those cans and put them in a bag,” Brian said as Jim did the dishes and set the soup encrusted saucepan to soak. “We’re going shooting.”

“Shooting?” Jim asked and then saw two rifles leaning beside their slushy boots at the front door. “I’m out of practice. You should have seen Grandpa’s face when we went out last Thanksgiving.”

Brian shrugged. “He’s probably afraid you’re forgetting everything he taught you. You used to be a hell of a shot.”

“He hunted deer in Virginia,” Jim said. “Nothing much to hunt up here. And anyway, it seems like a waste.”

Jim’s grandfather had taken him along and showed him how to hunt deer and harvest it for venison. Jim remembered pulling the trigger on his borrowed rifle and watching a deer fall down stone dead. He didn’t understand killing, how the deer could be a living breathing animal and then just meat a second later. He wondered where the lines blurred, if there was a razorblade thin transitional state between life and death, and if there was a way to prolong it to something quantifiable.

“I’m not ashamed to admit I was always squeamish with the cleaning and the skinning,” Brian said. “You were good at it.”

“Until mom yelled at Grandpa and made him stop,” Jim replied. His grandfather had taught him how to clean deer. He remembered how their corpses had been so warm that they’d seemed alive.

“At least you’re not keeping up with that,” Brian joked.

They drove down Brian’s road with a bag of rattling cans and two rifles till the gravel petered out into mud. Brian parked half in a snowdrift that came up to Jim’s knees.

Brian set up a line of cans on a cluster of boulders, and they took turns knocking them over. Jim was all over the place for the first half hour till his body remembered how to stand, how to cradle the recoil.

“All that studying make you cross-eyed, Jimmy?” Brian teased.

Jim glared and knocked the next can down clean. “No.”

Brian whistled. “Fuck law school. You should be a cop. You’ve already got a holier-than-thou complex, and you could be a mean shot.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” Jim said. “Policemen rarely discharge their weapons.”

“You would know that, you little nerd.” Brian ruffled his hair.

Jim set the cans back up again. He leaned against a fallen log and pressed his cold fingers to the warm rifle barrel. Snow was melting through his jeans, and his feet were sweating in two pairs of woolen socks and Brian’s secondhand boots. He sipped from the flask Brian had tucked into his jacket. It was emptier than he remembered, and he wondered if Brian had been sneaking sips when Jim had been distracted. Brian’s hands had been shaking more than when they started, but Jim had assumed it was from the cold.

“You think they miss us?” he asked.

Brian didn’t even ask Jim who he was talking about. “I think they know they’re supposed to miss us. They’ll probably give us shit for not calling them.” He watched Jim fire off another round, a little too much to the left. The can wobbled but didn’t fall.

“They’re kids, you know,” Brian said. “They scream till they get their way.”

“Come on, now,” Jim started.

“We canonize them,” Brian said. “That’s what kids do, and then when they get mad, we think, oh gosh it must be our fault, because they’re faultless.”

“Never thought of you as a philosopher,” Jim sniped.

“Fuck you,” Brian said. “I’m serious. I bet they were the middle children in the family.”

Jim thought of his mother’s older brother. “We don’t know them very well.”

“They don’t know _us_ very well,” Brian retorted. “And not for lack of trying on our part. Did I ever tell you they tried to pull me out of my major because they changed their minds about what they wanted me to be?”

Jim shook his head. “What did you do?”

Brian sucked his teeth. His face was flushed red. “I told them to shove it.” He jerked his chin at Jim. “And now they’ve got you giving into to them like a pansy.”

Jim frowned. “Maybe we should go back. You don’t look so good.”

Brian ignored him. His next five shots went wide and ricocheted into the trees.

 

Jim found the drugs in Brian’s chest of drawers while looking for a new towel to replace the dingy one in the bathroom. Brian couldn’t remember the last time he’d changed it, which was gross even by college standards, and Jim had to look out for his own best interests.

The plastic bag tucked into the back underneath the socks looked so innocuous that Jim almost missed it the first time around. One of Brian’s rolled up socks toppled over, and then Jim was staring at a small bag of weed.

Jim went cold. He thought, no. They didn’t have secrets, not like this. And Brian had promised him, he had _promised_ him.

He grabbed the bag of weed and slammed the drawer closed.

 Brian was outside fixing one of the squeaky steps on the porch when Jim stormed out and threw the bag at his face. Brian ducked, and the bag went skidding across the porch and into the grass.

"You're still doing drugs?" Jim demanded. "After what happened at Harvard? After you got kicked out for it?"

The blood surged into Brian's face. "You don't know _shit_ ," he shouted.

“Tell me what I don’t know,” Jim shouted back. “Tell me, huh? Because it looks like you’ve been lying this whole time. Is this what your betting group is really about?”

Brian spat into the grass. "So now you're going to lecture me just like Mom and Dad?"

"I had your back," Jim shouted back. "I always defended you to them, and it turns out you're exactly what they thought you were. A _pot head_ that keeps fucking up his life. You think you deserved to stay in Harvard because you were such a good guy? Because Mom and Dad were so mean to you?"

Brian made an aborted gesture towards him. Jim held his eyes and didn’t duck away. Brian’s hand curled into a fist. " _Get out_ ," he bellowed. "I don't want to see your face. Fucking get out of my house."

"Fine by me," Jim shouted back and pushed past. The step squeaked on the way down, and he kicked it.

He could barely see straight when he climbed into his car and started the engine. He cut through downtown at sixty-five to get onto the highway but then pulled over halfway there when he remembered his bag was still at Brian’s house. His school id. His wallet. He debated driving to Ralph's, but he didn't think he could bear Ralph's hopeful eyes and lingering touches.

Jim killed the engine and sat in stillness for a moment. The road was bracketed with pine trees still frosted with snow. He leaned his forehead against the window and breathed on it, the fog creeping up the glass and then receding as it evaporated.

He had always wondered, as he imagined most children wondered, what it meant to love your parents, and if all children thought that saying ‘I love you’ was not a gesture of affection but more a statement of an obligation that they was expected to communicate.  When his parents said, ‘I would move heaven and earth for you’ or ‘you’ll understand when you’re a parent,’ Jim understood that they didn’t want him to return the force of their affection because they relished in collecting emotional debt through the disparity.

But Brian. Jim had really loved Brian. And he had only told Brian what he needed to here, the same thing Jim had needed to hear from—

A finger tapped on the glass.

Jim jumped away and adrenaline surged through his body. “ _John_?”

Ralph was staring at him through the other side of the glass. “Car trouble?” he said.

“No,” Jim replied. He surreptitiously wiped his face, but his hand came away dry. “No, just thinking.” He sucked in a breath and let it out. He forced a rictus of smile. “I never did take you up on that movie.”

Ralph gave him a tentative smile back, and a little of his concern vanished. "They're playing _The Money Pit_ at the theatre."

“Okay.” Jim felt reckless. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

“I left my wallet at home,” Ralph said. “And you don’t know where the movie theatre is.”

“I’ll follow you,” Jim said.

Ralph’s house was similar enough to Brian’s that Jim did a double-take when walking in. Even the telephone in Ralph’s kitchen was a carbon copy of Brian’s down to the teal plastic sheathing.

Ralph rummaged around the living room to put his dishes in the sink and made apologetic noises about the place being a mess. Ordinary useless overtures that Brian had never tried to make. Jim didn’t realize how much he’d missed those niceties till Ralph asked him if he wanted some coffee or a glass of water.

Jim asked for a glass of water and changed his mind for a cup of coffee. Ralph found a box of barely stale Nilla wafers in the cupboard, and they shared half a sleeve.

“You don’t want to go to the movies, do you?” Ralph said.

“No,” Jim said.

"Want to see something?" Ralph said. He jerked his head. "It's downstairs."

"Sure," Jim said and put his empty cup of coffee aside to follow Ralph down a small flight of stairs into a dark and musty basement that looked like Ralph used it for storage.

There was an old pool table with all its faded green baize torn up, a few dusty lamps without their bulbs, and sunken couch upholstered in ugly blue and orange chintz that had been worn away till it was soft as Egyptian cotton. The carpet was nubby with a perpetual feeling of dampness, so Jim sat on the couch with his feet curled under him while Ralph walked around to shut all the windows.

Jim turned around to watch him. "What are you doing?"

"The rest of my movie collection is down here," Ralph said.

"Not really in the mood," Jim said, but Ralph laughed.

"You'll like these," he said and shut the last window. The furniture and lamps were dim ill-defined objects in the self-imposed dark.

Across from the couch Ralph had set up an ancient rabbit-eared television elevated on four spindly feet. Through some magic and a thick cord of wires, it was connected to a VHS player that was sitting on top of a low glass cabinet full of books. Ralph pulled some of the books out, and Jim could see video tapes hidden in an unobtrusive line behind them. Ralph chose one. The VHS cover was for The Man With Two Brains.

"I've watched that before," Jim said.

"You'll see," Ralph said and popped the tape into the player. "Are all the windows shut good?"

Jim turned around to check them. "Yeah, but why?"

Ralph sat beside him on the couch and hit play on the remote. A dim flickering image came on the television. The camera was shaky and the background was a particularly vivid shade of yellow that looked like cheap studio backdrop. It contrasted sharply against the cherry red Camaro in the foreground, and—

Jim's mouth fell open.

Two men were having sex on the hood of the Camaro. One was dark-haired and naked, and the other had blonde hair and was wearing a pair of close-fitting jeans. The naked man was on his back with his tanned muscled legs tumbled over the other man's broad shoulders. His head was thrown back, exposing the curve of his throat, and he was gasping. The other man was crouched over him, and Jim only realized he was sucking him off when the camera shot abruptly switched to a close up of the man's red lips wrapped around his cock. The video had a low thrumming bass beat playing in the background, and the man's mouth was working in time with it.

Jim felt dizzy. "Oh my god," he said.

"Mm," Ralph said. "It gets better. Watch."

Jim didn't think he could tear his eyes away. The scene continued for another minute, and then the man surged up into the blonde's mouth. The camera caught the arch from his shoulder blades down to his ass. The blonde man grabbed his hips and held him there while his throat worked, and the dark-haired man thrashed like he was in agony and cried out.

Jim's mouth went dry.

The blonde pulled away and crawled backwards off the Camaro while the other man lay against the windshield and panted.

Ralph touched his arm. "This is my favorite part.”

The blonde suddenly grabbed the other man's ankles and pulled him down. He flipped him over so that the man was face-down on the hood with his feet barely touching the ground, and then the blonde unzipped the jeans and freed his dick. It was dark and thick, and Jim watched mesmerized as he passed his own hand over it a few times. Then he grabbed the prone man's hips and pushed inside him in one graceful motion.

The prone man let out a full sensual groan, and Jim heard himself make a sound too. He had heard that men did these things, but he had never imagined it could be so…erotic. "Is he," he started. "Is that…"

"Yeah," Ralph said, and he was speaking softly too, like this was something sacred. "Yeah, it's..."

But he seemed at a loss for words too, and they just watched as the blonde man pumped into him in short powerful strokes. The naked man was moving at every push, his sweaty torso sliding up and down the hood, his fingers slipping on the shiny red paint as he scrabbled for purchase. He was grunting with effort at each thrust, and Jesus, his rough low voice would have been enough to get Jim off.

Ralph turned to look at him and started laughing. "You look like a scholar," he said. "Like you're studying for an exam."

"How am I supposed to look?" Jim asked.

"I don't know," Ralph said. His arm was pressed all along Jim’s side. "Like you're enjoying it."

Jim felt ungrateful. "No, I am," he said. "Really. Thanks for, um. For sharing these. I mean…"

He knew Ralph must have kept these absolutely secret, buying the videos at covert shops or acquiring them through a furtive exchange of hands, painstakingly finding fake cardboard jackets and locking up his basement like it was Fort Knox. Jim knew Ralph was a careful and methodical man, and it must have taken work and time to find his collection and devise ways to hide it.

To invite Jim over, to show him his secret hiding place and let him watch the tapes, was an almost unbelievable measure of trust. But Jim didn't know how to articulate that without embarrassing them both. Ralph tilted his head like he understood anyway.

The video segued into another porno that made Jim sit up and stare. One of the actors was tall and broad-shouldered with a quick wicked grin that bordered on arrogant. His hair was dark dishwater, but his eyes were a bright bright blue.

John, Jim thought and didn't realize he'd said it aloud till Ralph hmmed. "Yeah, I figured he looked like that," he said.

Jim choked. “What?”

Ralph frowned. “When I came to find you, you called me John. I figured…”

Jim didn’t meet his eyes. "He's not. I mean, we're not."

“You want him to be?”

Jim didn’t say anything and let Ralph think what he wanted. Ralph huffed out a breath. "I guess guys like you attract a type."

Jim tore his eyes away from the non-John on the screen. "What do you mean?"

"No offense, but you're pretty."

Jim's mouth dropped open. "I am _not_."

Ralph burst out laughing. "You kind of are, especially when you get riled up like that. You've got that wide-eyed Bambi look that makes guys want to take care of you." He winced. "Or mess you up."

"Mess me up?" Jim repeated.

Ralph looked a little uncomfortable. "Yeah, you know. See if they can tarnish some of that..." He fluttered his hands, as if he didn't know how to articulate what Jim had. "Unless that's your thing. Nothing wrong with that. But piece of advice? I would avoid those guys. Some of them can be really unpleasant."

"I'm not a delicate flower," Jim snapped. "And I'm not naïve."

Ralph grinned. "I’m sharing my porn collection with you. Yeah, you're pure as the driven snow." He tipped his bottle of beer towards the screen, where the two actors were exchanging a searing gaze that made the hair on Jim's arm stand up. "He look at you like that?"

But Jim was looking at the hard possessive press of the actors hands on each other's hips. "He touches me like that,” he said, and he wasn’t even lying now. John touched him like Jim was his responsibility, like he didn’t want Jim to leave.

Ralph let out a long drawn-out rush of breath that was almost a whistle and sank further down into his seat. "You're lucky," he said. "I, I don't think I've ever had... I mean, there isn't anyone else like me here. I never thought that I…"

Jim suddenly noticed the sharply angled tent of Ralph's trousers and realized why his voice sounded so painful and breathless. He thought about how utterly lonely Ralph must have felt growing here where no one had ever touched him, _really_ touched him with intent. Ralph had thought he would never meet someone like him, and Jim thought maybe he could be that person for a while if Ralph wanted.

"Hey," Jim said and leaned over slow enough that Ralph could pull away if he wanted. He put a hand on Ralph's hip. "Do you want me to um, help?"

Ralph went fiery red. "I didn't think you—what about John?"

"John's not here," Jim said. "I don't belong to him. And this is just…a friend helping a friend. It doesn't have to mean anything."

Ralph looked away, and Jim couldn't see his face. "Yeah, it doesn't have to mean anything," he whispered but reached up to take Jim's hand and move it to his belt.

A girl had kissed Jim once in the pool house of the country club where his dad and his friends had an annual summer pig roast. She had been the daughter of his dad's golfing buddy, and he remembered her mouth had been too moist.

Ralph kissed like a starving man, digging his fingers into Jim’s hair and the meat of his shoulder. Jim hesitated and then pressed his hand to the front of Ralph’s jeans. He figured it was like jerking off, but backwards. He could do that.

"Ah," Ralph said in his ear, and his hips stuttered against Jim's hands. "Oh, Jesus, yeah like that."

“You won’t tell Brian, will you?” Jim whispered. “Any of this?”

“No,” Ralph panted. “I wouldn’t do that.”

Jim pressed harder. “Promise me,” he hissed. “Ralph!”

Ralph made a soft beseeching noise. “I won’t, I won’t, promise.” He reached for Jim’s jeans. “You haven’t even—“

Jim jerked away. “I’m fine,” he said. “Don’t touch me. Don’t bother.”

Ralph pressed his face into Jim’s neck and said his name, grinding into him in short sharp jerks. Ralph came too easily, Jim thought with a little pity. He couldn’t imagine being that desperate  for anyone.

Ralph pulled away and pressed a quick soft kiss to Jim’s mouth. “You could stay,” he said hopefully. “You’re not going back to Harvard till this weekend. We could…”

"No. I’m leaving early. Tomorrow," Jim replied. He wondered if he could stay here, if being together with Ralph would be enough to make him content. They would stagnate in this town. Ralph would cling to him, and Jim would shake him off, angry at him for reasons he wouldn't be able to name.

 “Look me up if you're ever in Boston,” Jim added but they both knew it was an empty offer.

"Yeah," Ralph said without conviction. "Definitely."

 

Brian was slumped over his coffee the next day and didn’t look up when Jim let himself in. He didn’t ask where Jim had been. The house smelled like pot, and Jim breathed through his mouth as he went upstairs for his clothes and toothbrush.

He didn’t say goodbye when he left. Brian didn’t bother calling out.

On the way back, NPR had a story on a series of apparently random murders in southwestern Vermont. Jim thought about patterns, how humans tried to find them even within sets of totally random data and generated hollow meaningless solutions—and yet he still suspected he was missing something.


	3. Chapter 3

It was late spring in Boston when parks began the free outdoor movie season, the dance clubs in Cambridge began holding lessons outdoors again, and the rowing teams skimmed across the Charles River with their tan muscled backs shining under the sun. Jim was sending in his final paperwork to the nonprofit in D.C, and he and Mike had decided to move into off-campus housing in Cambridge. Mike was off visiting family on the west coast, so Jim spent the first few days after term cleaning out the apartment and buying stupid things like pots and pans and shower curtains. All of John’s postcards went up in a neat bright grid on the wall in his new room.

John called in the middle of the move and volunteered to accompany Jim on the drive back home to Albany for furniture. Jim didn’t know how to feel about that. He hadn’t seen John since before New Hampshire, but he did need an extra pair of hands. Brian was supposed to have helped him, but Jim didn’t want to dwell on it.

He picked John up en route from a provincial parking structure in Holyoke. John had bought them lunch, and the aroma of Reuben sandwiches and fries suffused the U-Haul. Jim accepted a steady stream of shoestring fries from John’s warm greasy fingertips and listened to him talk. John had spent most of the past month in Richmond and Manassas touring quaint Civil War sites and hiking the Appalachian trail along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the coldest spring he’d seen in years.

“Bet it was colder in New Hampshire, huh?” John reached across to tweak the collar of Jim’s shirt where it was crushed underneath his seat belt.

Jim wrung out a smile and then opened his mouth for another French fry when John poked it against his lips.

 

John strode through Jim’s house with a surprised considering look on his face like he was in the market for a two-story Georgian Colonial in upstate New York. The main floor had been decorated to impress with rich upholstery and sophisticated art, but John surveyed all of it with a mocking indulgent smile. Jim’s parents were vacationing in Aruba, and the air was preternaturally still as if the house had been empty for years.

He and John took the extra coffee table from the den and a few ginger jar lamps with dark green shades. They had arrived too late to take advantage of the cool overcast morning and were both sweating by the time they carried Jim’s white wicker dresser into the truck.

They drank tall glasses of water in the kitchen and discovered an unopened bag of pretzels in the pantry. Jim told John about his plans to vacation at the family house in Martha’s Vineyard before his internship in D.C, and John made interested noises and asked about the weather and tourism.

The answering machine in the living room was blinking like a single angry eye, so Jim checked the messages while John left to measure the bed with a little cheap retractable measuring tape he’d picked up at a hardware store in Holyoke.

Jim punched some buttons on the phone and watched John glide up the stairs with a proprietary hand on the railing, the clean easy lines of his torso rhythmic and serene. He liked his house with John in it. The house had always induced a brief shock of dissociative identity whenever Jim had visited. He was too lazy to pack many clothes from college, so he always ended up wandering around in his old spare clothes, unbending his spine, and falling into the quiet resentfully obedient child he’d been around his parents in high school.

John reminded him of who he was. With John, the Halsey home was a stranger’s house that they were pillaging for furniture like a pair of burglars.

The first few messages on the machine were for Jim’s dad, another from his mother’s tennis club inviting her to Sunday brunch. The next message was from three days ago.

"Jim," Ralph rasped in his ear. Jim’s stomach flip-flopped. "Jim, god. He's—"

The line went dead. Jim pressed the phone to his ear until it ached, but the machine had already moved on to a note from the library reminding his parents about overdue library books.

Jim wondered why Ralph had called him at home, where he had got the number. He skipped forward to the next few messages, but Ralph hadn’t called him again. Maybe he’d chickened out. God knows Jim would have.

He listened to the original message again and picked up a thread of desperation in Ralph’s voice and then the distant sound of a door closing. Jim frowned and deleted the message off the machine.

Jim found John upstairs looking at the Led Zeppelin posters in his room. It was surreal seeing John in his childhood room. Jim wanted to push John onto the bed and see whether he looked the same here as he did in his Quincy House dorm. Like he belonged there alongside Jim’s wide-faced alarm and bone white pillows.

“We taking the bed too?” John asked, surveying it with a critical eye.

Jim nodded and started pulling the musty pillows and sheets off the mattress. The sooner they got out of here, the better. Something about Ralph’s message was bothering him.

John stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "You haven't been smiling much today. Something wrong?" John’s thumb touched the stupid asymmetrical dimple on his cheek that Jim's mother had pressed her knuckles against when he was a child as if she could rub it away.

The touch was like a catalyst. Jim hadn’t thought about being angry till then.

 “You said you would call,” he gasped out. His throat felt thick, and his eyes burned. Jim wanted to punch him again, and he wanted it to _hurt_. “You said you would call, and I waited for you, and you never did.”

John’s eyebrows came together. “Jim—“

“No,” Jim snapped. “The next words out of your mouth should be, Jim, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I never called you when you needed me, and I left you all alone in that horrible place.”

John’s mouth parted in surprise, and then Jim was being held tightly in his arms. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” John’s lips were moving against Jim’s hair. John’s body was enveloping him like a blanket.

Jim squeezed his eyes shut. “John. How could you?”

“I’m so sorry, honey,” John murmured. “I should have called you every single day.”

“I was stupid,” Jim said. He rubbed his smarting eyes against the shoulder of John’s brown corduroy jacket. “I thought Brian and I looked out for each other.”

“You don’t need him,” John said. “I’ll take care of you.”

Jim choked out a humorless laugh. “You told me that you would never promise me that.”

“Seems like I told you a lot of things.” John’s fingers were rubbing gentle circles at Jim’s temples. “Was it really so bad?”

“It was horrible,” Jim said. “I found out that Brian started doing pot again after Harvard kicked him out for it, and there was a snowstorm, and we fought about Mom and Dad, and god, I missed you so much.”

Jim realized he was babbling and John was saying, “Easy, easy now,” like Jim was a skittish horse.

Jim took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Don’t leave me alone like that ever again.” He was satisfied when his voice came out halfway threatening.

John’s hands were a vice around Jim’s shoulders. “Kiddo, how could I ever?”

Jim hesitated. He wanted to be selfish. “If I asked you to do something, would you?” he asked.

"Anything."

 

The boat ride to Martha’s Vineyard seemed like no time at all with John beside him at the railing. Jim stopped by the bank to get the house key from the safe deposit box and then detoured to the grocery store for milk, bread, and cans of soup. John sneaked a few candy bars and a box of microwave popcorn into the shopping cart with a wink.

"Your father is so sweet," the beaming woman at the register told him, and Jim didn’t bother correcting her. John wasn't technically supposed to be staying at the house. Jim floundered at her questions, unsure how much he should give away. It was unlikely his parents would find out about John through the locals.

John sneaked up behind him and cuffed the back of his neck while he was still stammering out an explanation. “You gonna hold up the line all day, kid?” he asked and pulled him away with one hand looped around the grocery bags. The woman waved at them. Jim waved back.

Jim’s dad’s family had a quaint gingerbread cottage in Oak Bluffs. The siding was pale lemon chiffon yellow with a lace trim, but the window shutters and porch railing were deep candy blue with cream accents. The inside was stale and dusty with a few cobwebs handing in the doorways, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed.

"It's real nice." John trailed against the dark wood paneling in the living room. "Had this place long?"

"My parents met here," Jim said. "Well, not _here_ , but in town. This was my dad's family's summer home. The neighbors usually start coming in a few weeks. It’s empty in the wintertime."

“Empty,” John echoed, looking pleased. “Bet no one can hear you for miles.” He followed Jim into the kitchen and watched him test the fridge and check the cabinets for forgotten food.

“We should probably get real food tomorrow,” Jim said. “Pasta. Maybe fish. We have a grill out back, but it’s busted.”

“We playing house for a while?” John asked and sprawled unapologetically against the tiny dining room table with its vase of dead flowers. He already looked like this had always been his house. _Their_ house. Jim liked the sound of that.

It rained for the first few days, so Jim finished a few stray assignments and studied for his LSATs. Sometimes John sat in the same room to offer him silent company. Sometimes they would sit together for whole hours in silence, and other times and Jim grew bored and read questions aloud to him. John rattled off one right answer after another.

"You should have been a lawyer," Jim joked. "Can I convince you to take the exam for me?"

The Fieldmans called the next day to invite Jim to dinner. The Fieldmans were a couple that had become their family friends by virtue of vacationing at Oak Bluff in the same part of the season every year. They usually had a clam bake or barbeque together if one of them noticed the other had moved in for the summer, but Jim couldn’t bring John with him and couldn’t bear to leave him at home. They had only really been Jim’s parents’ friends, so he had no compunction turning them down.

Mrs. Fieldman was under the misguided impression that Jim would starve, but for a man that was always on the move, John turned out to be a good cook. They had cool crisp bottles of wine with fresh perch and pasta with rich red wine marinara and steamed mussels. Jim had never eaten so well. He suspected John liked cooking for him. It was endearing, even when John didn’t let him eat anything but what John put on his plate because he was afraid it would ruin his appetite or the times when John made dinner so late that Jim’s stomach growled for hours.

The weather cleared into a bright blue cloudless sky, so they rented out a tiny two person boat and spent the day on the water. Jim taught John how to sail and opened up a fresh set of welts on his fingers.

"Been a while since I've been out," he said and rubbed his palms together, cursing his soft hands. "We used to visit my cousins in Hampton Roads every summer."

Jim's skin tanned underneath his layer of sunscreen, and he took off his shirt so he wouldn’t have lines striping his arms and neck. He knew the tops of his shoulders would burn, but for now the breeze felt good. The taste of salt lingered in his mouth, and the wind blew his hair into a birds nest on top of his head.

They ate on the boat—egg salad sandwiches, potato chips, and a cool thermos of lemonade. Jim ate fast and messy and trailed his greasy crumby fingers in the water as he watched John lift up his shirt and slather sunscreen on his stomach.

"You want some help?" he asked as John strained to reach his spine. He looked away when John skimmed off his t-shirt.

John had a tattoo on his shoulder blade that blazed like a brand under the midday sun. It was a stylized raven like a Rorschach blot, its displayed wings feathered and delicate and its claws bared. “Saw it on a building when I was in Europe,” he explained.  “Liked the look of it. I’ve had it for years.”

“Huh.” Jim traced his lotion-covered fingers over the lines a few more times than necessary. John's skin was warm. Jim pushed the flat of his hand up John's nape and smiled when John stilled and then bowed his head. He did it again, digging his fingers into the cords of muscle on either side of John's neck.

"You done?" John said conversationally and reached behind to grab Jim's wrists, pull him forward, and wipe the remaining lotion on his chest. Jim's thumb brushed against one of his nipples, and he could smell the sharp piney scent of John's shampoo. He ran ticklish fingers over John’s stomach and laughed when John flinched.

 

Jim fell out of the habit of watching the six o’clock news during dinner because John said it destroyed the illusion of a vacation. It was all depressing stuff anyway—homicide and missing persons. The local video rental had most of the James Bond films, so Jim rented a few of the classic Connerys to watch after dinner.

“I ran into a few kids from Harvard at the store,” Jim said as they were settling down to watch From Russia With Love.

“What kids?” John asked. He offered Jim the bag of hot freshly-popped popcorn.

“Some people from class, no one special,” Jim said. “They asked me to go out with them later.”

“How much later? It’s pretty late now.” John squeezed his leg. “Not saying you shouldn’t go. I just feel responsible for you.”

Jim was amused and a little touched. “You feel responsible for me?”

Truth be told, Jim was getting used to John’s solid presence at his elbow wherever he went. Going alone to the video shop had been a little disquieting. Jim didn’t know what he would do during fall term when he was at Harvard and John was god knows where. He was tempted to ask John to stay, to share the apartment in Cambridge with him, but he had seen the strain of sedentary life creep up on John these past few days. He’d heard John walking up and down the hall at early hours of the morning and seen the pinched twitchy look around his eyes. John wasn’t meant to be housed.

Jim tucked his head against John’s shoulder. “I know what you’re doing,” he murmured.

“Yeah?” John replied, still looking at the screen. “Do you?”

“You’re sticking around for me,” Jim said. “It’s not like you. I appreciate that.”

John’s eyes were soft. “If you think the only reason I’m sticking around is you, sugar, then you’re right.” He tapped Jim on the nose. “But there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

“Oh.” Jim smiled goofily at him. “That’s nice.” He followed John’s hand to the soda can on the side table next to him and then zeroed in on the phone behind it. The wire had been pulled out. He sat up. “Hey, why is the phone disconnected?”

“Disturbs the peace and quiet, don’t you think?” John said. He let Jim have a sip of his soda. “And you’re not expecting anyone to call.”

“It’s quiet,” Jim agreed, but what he wanted to say was that everything was always serenely still around John as if he were the only blur of motion in the room. Jim settled back. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

After From Russia With Love, they watched Dr. No, and then You Only Live Twice. Jim tried to discreetly check his watch when John got up to get them both a few cans of cold beer from the fridge, but he felt bad now for wanting to leave John here all alone.

The beer made Jim warm and sleepy. He must have dozed off during the last film, because John’s warm slumbering body was pinning him down against the couch when he woke up.

“John?” Jim whispered, and the only answer was the puff of John’s warm breath against his neck. Jim couldn’t move, didn’t want to move. One of John’s hands was curled around his hip.

He didn’t need to go out, Jim decided. Anyway, it would make John happy.

Jim ran the tip of his finger against the fringe of hair at John’s forehead and wondered if this was how Valerie and her friend had lived together, easy and comfortably idle.

 

John was in the backyard inspecting the overgrown grass and weeds when Jim plugged the phone back in to call Mike, who had finally moved into their place on Cambridge. Jim was reluctant to tell John he was checking in with Mike about the move, because John believed that Jim was an adult that didn’t need to punch a clock with anyone.

“Must be boring living there by yourself,” Mike remarked. “Have you seen any Harvard kids?”

Jim kept an ear out for the tread of John's boots and cupped a hand over the phone's mouthpiece. "I’ve met a few. They invited me out.”

"Why are you whispering?" Mike asked. “Listen, are those all of John’s postcards on the wall in your room?”

“You went into my room?” Jim demanded.

“I didn’t know it was yours, man,” Mike protested.

“Sorry,” Jim said. “I’m sorry. Yeah, those are John’s.”

"Is that him in the Toronto picture? He's not what I pictured," Mike remarked, as if John had somehow disappointed him.

"What were you expecting?"

Mike made a noncommittal noise. "I don't know. Someone old."

"Well, he is the class of '71," Jim said.

 "Older," Mike clarified. He paused. Then, casually, "I like the card from Denver. There was a murder in Denver around that time, wasn’t there? Atlantic City too, I remember that.”

Jim tensed. "What exactly are you asking?" he demanded. "Because you should just come out and say it."

Mike blew out a breath. "I just…how much do you know about John?"

"Enough," Jim snapped. "Enough to know he would never…god, tear a person apart."

Mike hissed in a breath. "I didn't mean to imply that he's a murderer."

"Then what exactly are you implying?" Jim inquired coldly. “John isn’t one of your journalism assignments.”

He disconnected the phone again after Mike had hung up. God, Mike was one paranoid bastard.

But when they went out later to Rosalita’s, Jim watched John’s every move looking for a tell or a mistake that revealed that John was…what? An accessory to serial killing? God, he didn't know where Mike got this stuff.

John was making eye contact with the bartender every few minutes, and that was admittedly a little weird, but nothing suspicious. It was the first time they’d gone out to eat, and Jim had become so used to their insular familiarity that it was uncomfortable watching John look at someone else. And that was stupid and jealous, but Jim didn’t feel like sharing John with anyone. He regretted sitting at the bar instead of waiting another twenty minutes for a cozy booth or corner table.

The bartender wiped his hands and left, but not before sliding another pint in front of John's plate. John took a long appreciative swallow before pushing back his chair to excuse himself.

“Have a few errands to run,” John said and jerked his chin at Jim’s empty plate. “You can go on home if you like.”

“Okay,” Jim agreed and reached for John’s last onion ring.

John hooked their thumbs together for a second. “You make sure to go right home. Don’t talk to strangers.”

“I’m talking to one right now,” Jim teased and made a show of throwing down money for tip and leaving.

From the window, he watched John rise out of his chair and disappear into the back room. Jim hesitated for a few moments before slinking back in to follow him. By the time he got there, John had disappeared. Jim found a tiny employee toilet stinking of bleach and the door into the kitchens. The storage room door was ajar, and Jim huddled close to peer through the gap.

The bartender was sprawled against the wall, and John was kneeling between his legs. Jim was confused for a moment till the bartender gasped, hitched up his hips, and said “ _John_ ,” in a broken desperate voice.

Jim stumbled back till his back hit the wall and then panicked that they might have heard him. He took off running as soon as he got out of the restaurant.

He waited for John in the cottage for two hours. He checked the answering machine: ten messages, all from a few days ago, which he deleted without listening to them. He unearthed the ancient pushmower in the shed and cut the overgrown grass, skirting around the pile of dried mud and rust that was all that remained of the grill. _John_ , the bartender’s hushed desperate voice gasped into his ear, and Jim put his back into the pushmower till all he could hear was the loud clack-clack of the mower blades that rattled his teeth.

John came back loose-limbed and smiling, a real smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. He had brought something back from town, but it disappeared into the freezer before Jim could catch a glimpse.

“It's a surprise," John said with a wink. He looked more relaxed than he had all week, and Jim hated it.

John spent the rest of the afternoon poking around the backyard. Jim tried to investigate the freezer on the pretense of buying a box of horseshoe shaped cherry popsicles on a whim, but John's surprise was wrapped in a long shapeless black plastic bag that took up the entire floor of the freezer. There was barely enough room for the box of popsicles, so Jim broke it open and scattered them like packing peanuts.

When John came in for dinner, his shirt was plastered to his back, and there were half-moons of dirt under his fingernails.

"Have you been digging in the backyard?" Jim asked suspiciously. "What's going on?"

"A little project," John replied and gently herded Jim aside so he could wash up at the sink.

"Is it related to your surprise in the freezer?" Jim sniped and then immediately felt like a jerk. He pinched the hem of John's sleeve, right where it was flush with the swell of his biceps. "Sorry. I'm sorry. Just don't carve out a moat or anything, ok? My mom would kill me."

"Ok," John agreed. "I'll be done by tomorrow."

Jim watched John pour a line of lemony dish soap down his forearms and suds them up. He stared at John’s mouth and remembered the bartender at Rosalita’s, John kneeling in front of him. John’s lips swelling red around the guy’s dick.

Jim tried to be angry, but all he could manage was dull hollow shock. He wrung every drop of water from the dishtowel till his knuckles showed white and began wiping down tiny dried spatters of sauce on the stove. "Let me know if you need help. With your project."

John laughed softly. "Relax. I'm not actually building a moat around your house."

Jim flung down the dishtowel. "I’m not a princess, John."

"Yeah, you are," John replied and gave him a look of such intense affection that Jim couldn’t bear it and had to look away.

John grabbed his jaw with one soapy hand and made Jim face him. Whatever was in Jim’s expression must have satisfied him, because he nodded and turned back to the sink.

Jim wiped his chin and looked around the bright airy house. They would have to leave this place soon. John’s extra boots and jacket were already bundled into a grocery bag at the door.

Dinner that night was dishes of leftovers that had been languishing in the fridge. They had the popsicles for dessert. Jim spoiled himself and ate two, staining his mouth red.

"John," he said, shaping the sounds through his cold swollen mouth, and he felt a stab of hot satisfaction when John's eyes lingered.

Jim didn’t sleep well that night. He thought about the bartender’s thrown back head, his exposed throat, the way he’d said John’s name like he had any right to it. He thought about John taking him into his mouth, the wicked twist of his lips—

Jim thumped his pillow and rolled over, a headache spiking between his eyes.

 

The sun was high in the sky when Jim shambled down to the kitchen the next day in a hazy stupor. The clock on the stove said it was just past noon. It was too late for breakfast, but he poured himself a cold glass of milk and decided to eat the last of the frozen waffles.

His hand slipped on the freezer handle and came away bloody.

Jim reeled and stumbled back, staring at the bright stain. That was blood. _That was blood._

“Oh my god,” he gasped. “ _Oh my god_.”

His hand wavered over the freezer handle. Distantly he registered that he was on the verge of hyperventilating. He didn’t want to know what was sequestered inside the freezer. God, why was there so much blood?

But there was no way he could ever live with himself if he didn’t find out what was inside. Jim steeled himself, got a good grip on the slippery handle, and threw open the door.

The mysterious black bag was gone, the thin layer of frost inside tinged pink.

No, that was wrong. Jim closed the door again, and left a bloody print on the fridge’s white metal. He backed away, his ankle knocking into a chair, and then ran out to the backyard, dread making his footfalls sluggish.

"John?" he shouted. "John?"

He almost tripped over the corpse of the plastic black bag that was lying forgotten next to the pile of guts and bone. Jim’s stomach heaved, but there was nothing to throw up.

“John?” he shouted again, and then the smell of cooking fish hit his nose.

John was in the backyard standing over the grill. The sight of him with long-handled tongs and his sleeves rolled up was achingly domestic. And oh god, John had cleaned out and replaced the grill because Jim had reminisced about summers here when he was a kid and his father had made burgers on his birthday.

Jim checked the date on his watch and tapped the glass face.

"Hey, princess," John said, because John was an asshole. “Happy birthday.”

“It’s my birthday,” Jim echoed. “How did you know?”

“You told me,” John said. “Don’t you remember?”

“Maybe,” Jim hedged because if John said so, then he must have.

He walked over when John beckoned and slid comfortably into the crook of John’s arm around his shoulders. John gestured at the grill with his tongs. “Guy in town got me some nice swordfish. If you want burgers—“

Jim opened his mouth to yell and then thought better of it. It was hard to stay angry at John. “No, this is great. Really great. Thank you.”

John twinkled at him and offered the tongs. “You think you can keep an eye on this while I get plates? Don’t eat anything.”

“Ok. “ Jim waited till John had gone inside and then toed over one of the paper grocery bags lying in the grass. He spotted a pair of long sharp knives, the fixings for s’mores, and a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey. John had definitely been planning this for a while.

Jim turned back to the cooking swordfish. It was weird: there wasn't enough fish on the grill to warrant the size of the bag in the freezer, and Jim wondered what John had done with the rest of it. It seemed ungrateful to ask.

 

Jim woke up the next day in John’s bed, where they had both collapsed after depleting the bottle of whiskey between them. Jim was sprawled on his back, and John was on his side, his body turned towards him. They were breathing in sync.

Jim yawned and stretched, feeling the warm dregs of a good night’s sleep in his muscles. Jim didn’t like falling asleep around strangers. He hadn’t slept the first week he and Mike roomed together freshman year. But John wasn’t a stranger, and Jim thought he could get used to this. He wondered if John would let him sleep here again.

He stared at John’s slack face, his slightly parted mouth, the shadows under his eyelashes. He was wearing a touristy shirt he’d bought in Richmond that said _Virginia is for Lovers_. The hem was splashed with something that had dried rusty brown.

Jim sucked in a breath.

You could have asked me, he wanted to say. Instead of going to that guy in Rosalita’s. You could have asked me, and I would have let you. Not like with Ralph. With you, it wouldn’t have been a chore or an obligation.

And maybe that was why Jim had felt so angry and lost, because John always made him feel like he was needed. Like he was important. And John had gone to some stranger instead. But John would never have asked him, because John was a good guy. Jim didn’t deserve him.

The mattress dipped under Jim’s hands as he crawled over John’s body. Jim held his breath and kept his eyes on John as he dipped his head and pressed a brief terrified kiss against John’s shoulder. His heart rabbited in his chest so loudly that he was sure John would hear it.

“Thank you,” Jim whispered, and climbed out of bed to start cleaning up the house and pile the contents of his dresser back into his suitcase.

 

They whiled away their last few hours on the island in Edgartown’s Colonial Inn on one of the hottest days of the summer when the hotel’s rooftop balcony was completely empty. Jim was sprawled on his back with his t-shirt plastered with sweat to his chest. The wooden slats on the wraparound benches felt good against his skin. His head was resting just beside John's leg, and if Jim tilted his chin and squinted cross-eyed, he could make out the top of John's muscled thigh.

"Fuck, it's hot," Jim said and gave John lazy smile. "Was it this hot in Texas?"

"Worse, but it was dry," John replied. "Hey, give me your wallet."

"What for?" Jim asked but handed it over.

John opened the change pocket and fished out two pennies. "Close your eyes."

Jim frowned but did what he was told. Something was weighing down his eyelids. The coins. His parched eyeballs leeched the cold tang of copper from the pennies, and his skin went pleasantly numb. "Thanks," Jim murmured.

"Penny for your thoughts," John joked, and Jim reached out blindly to poke his thigh.

John grabbed his fingers and held them fast in an inescapable grip, and John's hands were as cool as copper, so Jim let him.

 

Jim didn’t call his brother until fall session had started again. Brian’s voice was wary and standoffish. He didn’t apologize. His job at Shop’N’Save was fine. He had started working longer hours at the hardware store since his snow plowing job was out for the warmer months. He didn’t ask Jim about school.

My god, John was right. I don’t need you anymore, Jim thought with cold startling certainty and almost hung up the phone right then.

“How is the rest of Cascade Falls,” he interrupted in the middle of Brian’s monologue about the Big East conference.

“It’s fine. Quiet,” Brian muttered. He seemed to like talking to Jim better when Jim didn’t answer back, so Jim stayed on to spite him.

“Yeah? How is Ralph?”

"Ralph.” There was a long pause. “Ralph’s dead."

Jim’s stomach plummeted. “What?”

“Yeah. Suicide. Did you know that guy was a homo?”

The phone was slippery in Jim’s hands. “No,” he said. “I honestly had no idea.”

Brian whooshed out a breath. “Yeah, one of the neighbors saw a video tape lying around in his kitchen. They were going to arrest him, and he…Jesus, it was messy. I can't believe I let you go over to his house."

Jim frowned, because that didn't sound like Ralph at all. Ralph was painstakingly careful about his videos, and none of them had incriminating covers. Unfortunately, he couldn't tell his brother without being asked how he knew about it, and it wouldn't help Ralph anyway.

 _Jim, god. He’s—_ Ralph had said on the answering machine, and Jim finally asked himself the question that had been bothering him ever since. If Ralph’s phone was in the kitchen, then who exactly had been at the door?

 

A sudden heat wave left Boston muggy and gasping, and the facades of houses were unbroken lines of open window shutters at night. Mike had a box fan that he generously placed between them, and it sat clicking pathetically in their windows sill and tried to circulate the stagnant air in their room.

Jim kicked off his sweaty sheets and turned his pillow over to savor a minute or two of cool cotton before his body heat warmed it back up.

He tossed and turned and had bad dreams about falling and being chased.He dreamed that he was on top of a blood red Camaro, the metal warm and solid against his naked back.

John was kneeling between his legs like Jim had seen him at Rosalita’s. John was sucking him slow like he was savoring Jim, like he was adoring Jim’s body with his mouth. Jim drove his thighs against John’s shoulders and tried to leverage up, but John just laughed and pinned him down with hands on his hips.

“John,” Jim gasped. “God, _John_ , finish it,” but John’s mouth was gone, and he was already climbing on top of the car. He hooked his arms under Jim's knees and pushed up so that his back was against the windshield. Jim felt like he was falling sideways, an odd jolt of vertigo, and suddenly he was curled up in the driver's seat inside the car staring at his own naked back against the glass.

He watched his shoulder blades and spine stretch and move to find a comfortable spot, and then John's hands appeared on either side of his head, the pressure making his fingertips white. Jim's head fell back, his hair crushed against the glass, and Jim watched as his own body began to move in sharp upward jerks. His shoulder left a smear of sweat behind.

"What are you doing?" he demanded, but he already knew, because he could see a dim image of his own legs wrapped around John's hips, and John's hands were going white and pink as he thrust into him. Jim heard himself cry out at every thrust, but he didn't know whether it was in pain or pleasure. And oh god, John was _fucking_ him _._ John was putting his dick—

Jim beat his fists against the glass. "John! Stop it! Stop! John, godammit!"

They couldn't hear him. The Jim outside was babbling, encouragement and delirium and pleas, but John kept fucking him fast and deep and savage for what seemed like hours until Jim's body was limp against the windshield, lying there and taking it.

And that was what made Jim dry-retch, the thought that he had stopped fighting. The quiet unnatural stillness of his body, like he was dead. He turned away and cradled his head. "God," he groaned and drew up his knees. "Stop it. _Stop it._ "

Then John raised his face from Jim's lifeless shoulder, looked through the glass, and _winked_.

Jim screamed and screamed at him. He tried the doors, railed at them with his hands and the soles of his bare feet till they stung. He pounded on the horn and the windows and anything he could reach, but it was like he was in a vacuum. He couldn't even hear his own voice.

"Open up for me, sugar," John breathed in a moist rush of air, and suddenly it felt like John was sitting next to him, like John was on top of him, inside him. Stretching him out and filling him up with bright glorious agony.

Jim gasped and came so hard that he jolted awake, panting and disoriented, in a tangle of sticky sweaty sheets.

 

The television mounted on the wall in the laundry room was on a CNN story when Jim came in for his laundry. Recent stories about a serial killer in the Midwest had been exploding all over the networks. Mike always rolled his eyes and said the media had a tendency to sensationalize this kind of shit, but this time he was saying it with a worried line between his eyebrows.

One of their guests was a professor Karen Bernstein from Brown University with a doctorate in psychology. Her co-guest was a retired FBI profiler Hugo Loomis who wore a perpetual subcutaneous sneer. Jim read the closed captioning as he pulled his warm staticky clothes out of the dryer and began to fold them.

“It has to be a woman,” Bernstein was arguing. “Why else would these young women trust the perpetrator so strongly?”

Loomis dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “Our perpetrator’s a man. He’s charismatic. He charms them away.”

“Charms them,” Bernstein repeated. “You think these people would feel comfortable enough to walk off with a stranger because he’s charming?”

“He’s probably a young guy, good-looking. Knows how to pull them in.”

“I disagree,” Bernstein said. “The way these people have been killed speaks to experience, practice. It’s an older woman. Or man, I suppose.”

Loomis gave her a patronizing smile. “Look, I just don’t think a woman is capable of this degree of violence.”

Bernstein’s expression suggested that she would be happy to prove him wrong. “What I want to know is where did this killer come from? A person like this didn’t just come out of the woodwork. Why now?”

“I think he’s showing off,” Loomis said.

“Yes,” Bernstein said. “But for whom?”

The show switched to a commercial break, and Jim discovered he had been matching his socks wrong while he’d been watching the broadcast. He threw them back into a pile and started again.

Mike had shown Jim some of the articles from the Midwest murders. The murders had been gruesome, with a surprising level of complexity—some people thought the murderer was a doctor—but Jim’s attention had been stuck on the lurid splashes of gore and blood, ribs delicately peeled away like flower petals and exposed organs shining jewel-like in the sun. Each corpse was a bouquet of roses, a lacy valentine.

They had it wrong. The killer wasn’t showing off. All the murders were messages, like a series of transcontinental love letters whispering, _I’m here—come find me_. _Be mine._ Like a forlorn postcard from far away saying, wish you were here.

 

John called at the last minute to meet him for dinner, so Jim cancelled post-midterm celebrations with Mike to wait in front of the newsstand at Harvard Square station. Mike hadn’t been happy about that, but they were in the middle of an unspoken armistice over the John issue, so Mike just watched him leave with a tight-lipped grimace.

John was late, as usual. Jim didn't want to get kicked out for loitering, so he bought a TIME magazine issue with an artsy photograph of Bork on the cover and a bonus feature about John Paul II visiting Detroit. Detroit, of all places. Maybe the Pope thought the Irish-Catholics in Boston could hold their own or the godless college heathens were more trouble than they were worth.

John finally showed up a quarter after. His hair was sticking up like a pale fluffy dandelion seed, and his nose was pink from the breeze. He looked good. He wasn’t the man that had spread Jim out against a car windshield, but Jim flushed anyway and hated it.

"Where the hell have you been?" he asked irritably.

John's eyebrows shot up. "Well, hi to you too, Jimmy."

"Don't call me that," Jim snapped. "My mom calls me that."

"I'm not your mommy, princess." John put a cigarette in his teeth and cupped it close to his lighter. The tip flared red. He handed it to Jim, who sucked on it for a few seconds, arranging his lips just where John’s had been.

Jim exhaled and handed back the cigarette. "Mike is being stupid. He told me I shouldn’t go out with you today."

"Yeah?" John flicked the newspaper from Jim's fingers and read the cover.

"Yeah," Jim said. Unease beaded across his shoulder blades. John’s eyes had that pinched look around them. "I stopped talking to Brian."

"Did you." John's lips curled up derisively, and he blew smoke into Jim's face. "You want a hug or something?"

 "No." Jim floundered. "No, I just—"

"You just want to whine about your terrible life."

"You don't know shit," Jim snarled.

"Sure."  John zipped up his jacket and stubbed out his cigarette. "Come on, I'll take you out for burgers."

"Fuck off," Jim said, but John turned around and walked away, and Jim huffed out a breath and followed him.

Jim was already feeling contrite by the time they reached the little hole-in-the-wall burger joint in Harvard Square. It was packed with happy hour drunks, but John found them two quiet seats at the counter where they could watch the staff serve up burgers and plates of hot golden fries.

Jim brightened when he saw Nash in the kitchen.

Nash cocked her hip against the counter and snapped her gum. She looked bored. A drunk fraternity boy tried to flirt with her, and she rolled her eyes but then turned a smile on Jim when she saw him. "Hey, your honor. You’re out of your monastery early."

"Wanted a study snack," Jim replied. "How's your dad?"

"He's out of surgery, doing fine. He's going on an all-salad diet after this if I have anything to say about it," she replied. "What can I get you boys?"

"Burger, well done—" Jim started.

"No toppings, mustard," she finished and shook her head. "You know, we've got other kinds of burgers here. Wouldn't hurt you to try something else."

"It might," John joked." I'll have mine rare with tomatoes." He jerked his chin at Jim. "Put some tomatoes on his burger too."

"Hey!" Jim said, but then John put his warm square hand on his thigh underneath the table, and the words stuck in Jim's throat.

"You're a growing boy," John said, and his eyes had a cold intensity that Jim couldn't look away from. "You should eat your vegetables." His hand slid higher till his little finger was tucked into the crease of Jim's thigh and his groin. Jim stifled a gasp and felt his face go hot.

Nash looked between them with a bewildered expression but wrote it down. "Tomatoes. Fine."

Look, Jim wanted to scream at her. Can't you see what he's doing?

John was still staring at him. He looked like a different person, cold and empty, even thought his voice was still conversational. "You want fries or a milkshake?"

Jim tightened his lips. "No."

John turned back to Nash. He still hadn't moved his hand from Jim's thigh. "Two milkshakes. Chocolate."

She snapped her gum. "We're out of chocolate."

"Strawberry, then. You got strawberry?"

"Yeah," Nash looked dubiously at Jim and then pushed away from the counter. "Sure, coming up."

John watched her go, and Jim didn't know what he was thinking. The appraisal he was giving Nash was more calculating than appreciative. Jim darted a glance at the others sitting at the counter, but they were too drunk to notice John's hand under the table. Jim bent his head and lowered his voice. "Get your fucking hands _off_ me," he hissed even though he knew it was his fault John was pissed.

John tipped his head towards Nash. "How do you know her?"

Jim's hand clenched around his knife and fork. " _John_."

John raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "I'm going to sit here," he said. "And you're going to answer my question."

They stared at one another, and Jim was the first to look away. He took a deep breath. "S-Sometimes she's on shift when I'm here."

John's eyes were guarded and dark. "Do you like her?"

Jim was taken aback. "What?"

John's fingers were digging into the inseam of Jim's jeans. It hurt. "Do you want to _fuck_ her _?_ "

Part of Jim knew he should just tell John to mind his own business, tell him that he didn’t have to justify _shit_ to him. "No," he heard himself saying instead, and hated the careful appeasement in his voice. "God no. I swear. John, she's just a waitress that my roommate used to date. _John_."

Just like that, John was back to his normal smiling self. He slid his hand from the inside of Jim's thigh to his knee and squeezed. "Yeah, kid. I believe you. Why does she call you your honor?"

Jim breathed a small sigh of relief but knew he wasn't out of hot water yet. "She sees me here with my law books sometimes. She thinks I should be a Supreme Court justice and wear a stupid wig. I want to be a criminal lawyer, like my fath…I want to be a criminal lawyer."

"Criminal law?" John murmured. His mouth twisted up. "Fighting against evil for truth and justice?"

Jim raised his chin. He knew it sounded stupid, but he didn't care. He _believed_ in those things. "Well, why not?"

John's thin lips flicked upward. "You're cute."

"I am not _cute_ ," Jim snapped.

"Sure, you are," John replied. He looked amused. He reached out a finger and tapped Jim's nose. "Cute as a button."

"Two strawberry milkshakes," Nash announced and arranged two tall Styrofoam cups in front of them. Jim could have kissed her. "You boys enjoy."

John took his hand away to grab one of the milkshakes. The sudden loss of heat made Jim's thigh goose pimple. Part of him wanted John to put his hand back.

Part of him wanted John. To put his hand back.

He felt like throwing up.

It had been sexual assault. Unwanted or offensive touching. It was textbook.

But Jim didn't know if it was unwanted if he'd been fantasizing for weeks about John's big hands jerking him off slow and possessive. He wanted John's hands on him all the time, saying _taken_ and _keep away_ and _mine_ like Jim's body was John's for the asking. And Jim wanted him to ask. But there was just something about the way John had touched him that made him feel ashamed.

John jerked his chin at the other milkshake. "Drink up," he said.

"No, thanks," Jim spat. "I told you, I don't want it."

John shrugged and kept on slurping his own milkshake. A bloody spot of strawberry syrup dribbled down the corner of his mouth. "Suit yourself."

Nash brought their food piled high with fries and neatly cut wedges of pickle. They ate in stony silence, and John didn't touch him again. People left and arrived around them: a group of haggard engineers that argued over fluid equations as they waited for their food, and then a pair of drunk sorority girls that screamed with laughter over some inside joke. Jim kept his head down and wolfed down the rest of his burger.

John stopped him when he tried to pay. "I promised you," he said with a wink and fished some bills from his wallet. "Said I'd take you out."

"You don't have to," Jim said. He was sure the tips of his ears were red. "Really, John."

"Shut up," John said amicably and threw in a ridiculous tip that made Nash's eyes widen. "Hey, where's the men's room?"

Nash went to ring them up and pointed to a dark little door in the back of the diner with her chin. “Ask for the key up front.”

"Thanks," John said, turned to give Jim a _look_ , and then walked away with his hands in his pockets. Jim's eyes involuntarily dropped to the easy powerful lines of his torso.

Nash was back as soon as the men's room door swung shut. "Jim," she whispered as she bent to clear away their plates. "Where did you find this guy?"

Jim rescued his milkshake before she could take it away. It was a little warm and runny now but still good. He felt like he was betraying something by drinking it, but John hadn't let him order water, and he was thirsty. "He's a Harvard alum. Told me he was an engineer."

Nash pursed her lips. "Well, he gives me the creeps. You should see yourself. You look like you're afraid of him."

"I'm not afraid of him!" Jim snapped back. Nash looked startled, and Jim wondered why he was being so defensive. Nash was only curious. "Sorry, I didn't mean to…I met him in the library last fall on alumni weekend. He just sat down at my table."

"Why did you talk to him?" Nash asked, and for a moment her eyes reminded him of his mother's. _My mother told me never to talk to strangers_ , he had told John.

Jim shook his head. His ears were ringing. The phantom finger marks on the inside of his thigh throbbed dully. "I don't know. I was tired. I thought maybe he could help me."

"Help you with what?" Nash asked, but then the men's room door swung open, and Jim turned away from her.

"Ready to head out?" John asked from behind him, and Jim hunched in his shoulders and nodded.

 

John played with his switchblade as they walked back to Jim’s apartment. _Snick. Snap. Snick. Snap._ His other hand was companionably wrapped around Jim's elbow, a solid reassuring weight. John was walking him to the door like this was some kind of _date_ , Jim had the sudden irrational thought that he should have never showed John where he lived.

“Have you heard about those murders in Salt Lake City?” Jim asked.

John gave him a slow lurid smile. “Now why would you ask about that?”

“I don’t know,” Jim said. “I remember you said you had been to Salt Lake City once. Just trying to make conversation.”

“Some conversation,” John said, but he was smiling.

 _Snick. Snap_. And suddenly the closed knife end was resting against his jugular. Jim sucked in a breath and thought John could hear his heart hammering like thunder in his chest. He was pinned against his own front door like a butterfly on a board by the electric blue of John's eyes.

"People say the darnest things to save their own lives." John's white hot gaze was fixed on Jim's throat.

"I…I don't know anything about that," Jim stuttered.

The blunt pressure increased. "Sure you do. Come on, pretend I’m a bad guy. What would you say?"

Jim hesitated. "I'll do anything," he said, and his voice cracked. "No. Stop. Help me. I want to live. Please."

"Please," John rumbled, tasting the word. "I like that one." He ringed Jim's Adam's apple with the tip of the knife handle. "Say pretty please, Jimmy. I think you could say it real pretty."

Jim’s mouth moved to shape the word. " _No_ ," he said instead, and his voice didn't waver. He stared straight back into John's eyes. "I really can't."

The smile on John's face dimmed, and he reached out with his other hand to ruffle Jim's hair. "You're really something, you know that?" he said. He flicked his knife closed and dropped it into the front pocket of Jim's shirt. "Here. Keep it."

I don't want it, Jim wanted to say, but he kept silent. "Will you come back for Halloween?" he asked instead and almost bit his own tongue.

John reached forward to catch Jim's chin and ran a thumb down the corner of his mouth. Jim didn't breathe. John's thumb came away slightly pink, and he licked it and grinned. "Did you like the strawberry shake?"

Jim stuck out his chin. "I didn't drink it."

"Sure," John said. “What are you doing for Halloween?”

“Mike, Nash, and I are going to a party at Zeta Alpha Rho.”

John’s fingers dug into his shoulder. Jim winced. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought up Nash. John tilted his head, his eyes thoughtful. “You gonna dress up?”

Jim looked away, watching John from the corner of his eye. “Maybe.”

John’s other hand was flat against the door, right by Jim’s hip. “You gonna dress up real cute, Jimmy?”

 Jim could play coy too. “I could.”

He toed at a discoloration in the porch slats and slid his foot between both of John’s. John’s knees parted to make room for him. John always made room for him.

“Mm.” John bent his head low and hooked a finger through one of Jim’s belt loops. “I think you’ll have to persuade me.”

The breath left Jim’s body.

He surged forward till their chests were flush together. He should have been afraid, but ever since John had put a hand on his thigh at the diner, Jim had been imagining John’s hand sliding just a little higher. His jeans felt too tight. “ _Please_ ,” he begged against the stubble skimming John’s jaw.

“Yeah?” John’s breath puffed against his face, and his grip on Jim’s shoulder was making it go numb.  

Jim turned his head. Their noses bumped together. Jim wanted to kiss him. Jim wanted to kiss him so badly that he could barely speak. “Pretty please. _John_.”

John’s fingernails dug into Jim’s shoulder _hard_. Jim gasped, a little reedy cry he remembered himself making when John had pinned him down and fucked him like Jim was a godamn religion.

But that wasn’t real. None of that was real, and John was jerking away like he'd been burned and looked at his own hand in amazement like he couldn’t remember how it had got there. "Jim, go inside and lock the door. Right now."

Jim’s heart plummeted. "John—" He jumped as John's hand slammed against the lintel right beside him.

"Do it," John rumbled, and his voice made Jim's hair stand on end.

Jim fumbled with his keys, dropped them, picked them up again, and managed to get the door open wide enough to eel inside. John's boot thudded across the threshold, but Jim threw his entire weight against the door and turned the deadbolt.

Jim’s short panicky breath roared in his ears. John waited at the door for a long moment like he was expecting Jim to invite him in—and god, Jim was about to do just that—but then John turned and the sound of his boots echoed away.

Jim sighed a long release and sank down with his back to the door till he was sitting on the doormat. His shoulder glowed with pain, and he pressed his hand against it and reveled in answering echo of fingermarks at his thigh. He was shaking so badly that he couldn’t reach behind his head to turn the tiny lock on the door handle.

Jim peeled off his sweaty clothes in the hallway and stood under an ice cold shower till it felt like he’d used up half the water in the city. Two little crescent moons of blood—a forefinger and a thumb—marked the clear flesh of his shoulder like brackets, like he was a footnote in the story of John’s life. A brief interesting blurb, here and then gone.


	4. Chapter 4

Jim hardly remembered how he muddled back home after his LSATs and tucked himself into bed. He woke up twelve hours later with the necrotic stench of gum and Jolt Cola coating his tongue and an old Post-It note on his pillow from Mike saying _‘gone out to dinner with Nash_ ,´ but Mike’s bed was unslept in, so Jim figured Mike and Nash had gotten back together.

Jim stretched and felt his ankles pop. He had fallen asleep in his jeans, and the metal button had left an angry red circle just below his navel like the curve of John’s fingernails. Jim shucked his jeans, rolled over, and slid a hand into the front of his boxers. He pressed his face against his pillow and conjured up the phantom whiff of John's cologne in his sheets, of John in the bed with him, all around and underneath him, John's square hands on his dick. He had stopped feeling guilty about doing this. It had been John, after all, who had taught him never to feel guilty about anything.

“Mm, Jo—“ he started and then slammed a hand against his mouth. Speak of the devil and he shall appear, Jim thought hysterically and bit the fleshy mound of his palm to keep from snickering out loud.

Jim emerged boneless from his room to make a piece of plain dry toast for breakfast. John’s cooking had spoiled his tastebuds and left him with a thin bland appetite now that he was on his own again. He put on a pot of coffee while warbling out a broken tuneless rendition of the Folgers song. His body felt new, barely-used. He stretched his arms above his head and felt his muscles twinge like overextended rubber bands.

He called his parents to tell them about the LSAT. He was nice to his mother, even when she asked him the same questions over and over again: how did you do, how much have you studied, why haven’t you called? They didn’t know what to say to each other anymore, so they kept up a mantra of ‘yeah, uh huh, okay’ back and forth till she was satisfied that they’d had a real conversation for once. He hung up feeling peaceful and wondering why he had ever talked to his parents like they were anything else than a monthly electricity bill or a toll booth on a long stretch of road.

And god, Jim wanted to _drive_. He wanted to point a car towards the west and keep going till he was in the middle of nowhere for someone to find.

He threw open the front door and planted a foot squarely on Mike’s morning paper. He hoped that Mike wouldn’t care about the shoeprint. Nothing exciting ever happened on a Tuesday anyway. Jim pulled back his foot to inspect the damage.

 A woman’s photograph was splashed across the front page. A blonde girl next door type.

Jim stumbled forward to snatch up the paper and fell back into the house, already scanning feverishly across the page. Her name was Peggy Larsson, and she had been a junior photographer for National Geographic. Her remains had been found in the Toronto suburbs yesterday.

Her spine had been ripped out. The skin had been clawed off her arms, but her killer had made sure she wouldn’t die of blood loss. The corner said the murderer had kept her alive for hours, and Jim knew that whoever had done this had thought about the way deer fell when they were shot.

Her last known location had been Niagara Falls, where she had been sent for an assignment.

“Niagara falls,” Jim repeated and walked into his room, still staring at the picture. And Jim knew her. He _knew_ her, just as he knew that she had been an investigation into the infinitesimal slipstream between life and death, a philosophical inquiry into the difference between animal and meat.

He stopped in front of his rumpled bed and looked at the postcard splashed across the wall. Peggy Larsson's face smiled back.

The newspaper crumbled at Jim’s feet.

"Oh my god," he breathed. It was coincidence. It had to be coincidence.

 _Her name is Margaret,_ he remembered John had written on the back. Margaret. Peggy. The girl that had reminded John of him.

Jim collapsed onto his bed and then winced and scooted over. He knew it was just a figment of his imagination, but he could feel John’s knife radiating malaise from where it was entombed underneath his mattress. He didn’t know when the notion had taken hold, but he tossed and turned at nights now like he was the fucking Princess and the Pea. But sometimes when Mike was away, Jim unearthed the switchblade and slept with it under his pillow where its cool surgical kiss against his fingers lulled him to sleep. Maybe the knife wanted to be close to him, was worming up through the mattress to lie cradled in his hands.

Jim retrieved the switchblade now and ran a thumb up and down the wood and metal inlay. Jim flipped it open and closed, listening to the rhythmic _snick snap_ of the blade. It was a thin knife, and he twirled it around his fingers like a pencil. His grandfather had taught them about knives. He knew John’s was a good one, knew there was no reason for him to throw it away just because John happened to have taken a picture with a pretty girl he had met on vacation in Toronto.

He didn’t know if John would come to see him now after Jim had fucked everything up, but he needed John to look him in the eye and tell him that he was being silly or paranoid. Because surely no one who could laugh like that, who had taken care of Jim and protected him, could ever be capable of the kinds of horrific things they were censoring in the news. This wasn’t a movie—there was no grand finale, no arch villains or conspiracy plots.

He didn’t hear Mike come in till he stuck his head through the doorway and said, "Hey, man."

Jim started and he felt the moment the knife faltered. He turned and saw the long cut running across his thumb but couldn't feel anything aside from a curious detachment. Then blood began running down his thumb in a hot stinging wave.

"Oh shit," Mike said and ran to get some paper towels.

The knife was lying in a sated heap on the floor. Jim picked it up, wiped it clean against his jeans, and flicked it closed.

It was a long time coming, he thought as he stared at the blood on his hand dispassionately. He had half expected it when John had pressed the closed knife to Jim’s throat and pressed himself against Jim like he wanted him in all the ways Jim dreamt in his stupid fantasies. John knife had scared him. _John_ had scared him. Jim had never been afraid of him before.

When Mike rushed in with paper towels and a roll of bandages and bent over his hand to clean it up, Jim studied the top of his head and wondered—really wondered—why Mike didn’t like John, why Nash hadn’t liked John.

“Your senior thesis for journalism’s going to be about this alleged serial killer on the news, right?” Jim said.

Mike sat back. “Not alleged, they say he’s real. Calling him the Hitcher.”

Jim’s good hand tightened around the switchblade handle. “The Hitcher?”

“Because his victims turn up in the middle of nowhere. Figure he hitchhikers with them, gives them some phony directions.”

“Could be a woman,” Jim murmured.

Mike laughed. “That’s what Nash said. Okay, how’s that.”

Jim flexed his fingers and felt a sharp bite of pain but no difficulty moving. “So, you and Nash, huh? Thought she broke up with you.”

Mike gave him a small smile and shrugged. “She thought I would get out of Boston and leave her, you know? She tried to scare me off. Thought it was best for me.”

 “Oh,” Jim said. He felt the sensation of falling, like all the blood had rushed to his head and back down to his toes, “ _Oh_ , you stupid sonovabitch.”

“What?” Jim swayed a little, and Mike grabbed him. “Hey, are you ok? What?”

“Not you, sorry.” Jim wet his lips. “Do you mind if I look at your thesis?”

Mike’s lips twisted. “Do I mind if I get a free proofreader for the most important paper of my college career? Gee, Jim. I might need some convincing.”

Jim laughed. “And your bibliography,” he pressed, but Mike was appeased and just waved his assent before standing up with his hands to his knees to get Jim a glass of orange juice from the kitchen.

Jim looked across the room to Peggy, her eyes half-lidded, her face serene and Mona Lisa-esque. Her hand half-raised in a blur of motion at her side, the palm turned outward like a benediction.

“I don’t need you to watch over me,” Jim told her, but Peggy’s mouth was parted with laughter over a joke no one was telling.

 

_From the Harpe brothers to the present day Hitcher, American media has historically shown a marked difference in their treatment and coverage of domestic serial killers in contrast to conventional murderers and other perpetrators of similar violent crime. Media coverage of serial killers is highly detailed with a focus on the history and psychology of the perpetrator instead of the victims. This treatment has both positive and negative consequences for the perpetrator and law enforcement._

Mike had started his thesis over the summer with plans to graduate in December, and he had accrued an impressive list of resources, including every media incident about the Hitcher for the past few months.

Jim mounted a cheap paper map of the continental U.S. on his tackboard and painstakingly studded it with multicolored pins. San Diego, Cape Cod, the Florida Keys.  It wasn’t fair: John travelled around a lot—of course he would have gone into the major cities, same as the Hitcher—but thankfully most of Mike’s dates were off by as much as a few months, though Jim plucked fretfully at the bright red pins on Altoona and Toronto. There were plenty of places John had been that the Hitcher hadn’t. Jim considered packing it all in and confessing his stupid conspiracy theory to John for a laugh.

That was until authorities found a body in the concrete floor of a jail cell in Fredericksburg, Texas, sixteen miles from the tiny ghost town of Albert.

Jim called Nash, who sent him over to talk to her brother that kept the family diner back home. Nash’ brother got him the Fredericksburg police department listing from the telephone directory and filled him in on the late-breaking local news. The body still hadn’t been identified, but it wasn’t recent—the concrete for the new batch of jail cells had been poured last year. Nash’s brother really liked to talk, especially when he had a friendly ear, and Jim racked up a fortune in out-of-state charges by the time he was able to get away and call Fredericksburg.

The phone rang and rang, and Jim hunted through his desk drawers for John’s alumni file while he waited. He had sworn to himself that he wouldn’t open it, but he wanted John to be innocent. He _knew_ John was innocent, and the file would prove it. John had never lied to him.

 “Captain Esteridge speaking,” a voice said in Jim’s ear.

Jim’s fingers tightened on the receiver. “Is this the Fredericksburg police department?”

 “Yeah, who is this?”

The file wasn’t in the desk, not in the drawers or pressed between the line of textbooks in his carrel. Jim opened the cardboard box of odds and ends in the back of the closet that he had never gotten around to unpacking. “My name is Jim Halsey. I was wondering if a John Ryder’s gone through your station.”

“A who? Are you with the paper?”

“No, sir.” Jim replied. “John’s…family.  He could have been in your jail when…please. His name’s John Ryder. R-Y-D—“

The captain’s voice gentled. “Well, maybe he was here, maybe he wasn’t. Wish I could help you, son, but I’ve got enough of a mess on my plate right now.”

The file wasn’t in the box either. Jim kicked it with a satisfying thump. “Can’t you look in your records?”

“Government spooks are swarming all over the place. I can’t even get into my office for the keys to my own damn truck.”

“Maybe someone saw him,” Jim persisted. “He’s tall, blonde—“

“I’m real sorry. Wish I could help,” Esteridge said.

“But—“

“You take care, Jim,” Esteridge said and hung up.

Jim slammed the phone back into its cradle and flopped down onto his bed. He should have known that Fredericksburg would be useless. That file was the only thing he’d had, but after turning his entire room inside out, he was forced to accept that it wasn’t here. But that was impossible. Maybe John had taken it when he was helping Jim move the furniture from Albany—but no, that was silly. John had never even known Jim had it. John had left very little of himself in Boston: his postcards, his knife.

Jim sat up.  Of course.

He called Bobby’s to find the bartender he had met on his first evening out, the man that had remembered John’s name from their receipts. The woman at Bobby’s told him his name was Freddy, and had a day job at Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop on Newbury street.

He found Freddy near the end of his shift, checking out last minute customers and writing out cash register totals. Jim pretended to buy a book and let Freddy recognize him. Jim had to lie a little like he had with Esteridge and tell Freddy that he had stood John up on a date at Bobby’s and wanted to pay back whatever John had ended up spending alone to make it up to him.

You should keep track of your own boyfriend,” Freddy muttered but was mollified with a combination of hot coffee and a chocolate chip muffin from Trident, and Jim’s promise to pay for his fare. He was practically lively by the time they’d walked to the T station.

“This is pretty exciting, like a Richard Stevenson novel,” Freddy quipped as they boarded the Green Line to North Station. “You like gumshoe stories?”

“I have too much reading for class,” Jim confessed.

“You’re still in school.” Freddy didn’t even bother hiding his scandalized expression. “John sure does like them young, huh?”

Jim winced. Freddy’s comment was tasteless, but he wasn’t wrong. “John’s…he’s—“

“Sorry, that was a dumb joke,” Freddy interrupted. “You guys are cute together.”

“I know I’m just some idiot kid to him,” Jim snapped. “You don’t have to tell me that. You don’t have to ask me what the hell John is doing with a guy like me.”

Freddy was quiet till they reached North Station and let Jim into the back room at Bobby’s without any complaints. The receipts were all kept in shoeboxes in a tiny room with stacks of shelves built into the walls. shelves. The whole place was a firetrap.

Freddy opened a shoebox and pulled out a wad of rubber-banded receipts. “They’re not exactly in order.”

“It’s fine. Thanks for everything.” Jim inspected a row of shoeboxes that were marked by year. “I can figure it out from here.”

Freddy didn’t move.  “My shift here starts in an hour anyway. I’ll stick around.”

Jim felt a little sorry for snapping at him. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Nah.” Freddy gave him a warm smile. “Not every day a pretty face picks you up from work and buys you coffee.”

 “Oh, um.” Jim didn’t know what his expression looked like, but Freddy laughed. Jim wondered if Freddy was the kind of guy Ralph had been talking about. He thought Freddy would have liked Ralph.

It was slow going. Freddy hadn’t been kidding when he said the place was a mess, and Bobby’s didn’t exactly report their taxes completely kosher, so they didn’t really bother maintaining their records. Freddy found one of their receipts from a few months back—two black coffees, one eggs over easy and one stack of pancakes—but it was an old one from when John had told him that he came to Bobby’s to be left alone. But John had never lied to him. Maybe he had known people would assume they were together. Maybe everyone had noticed Jim’s painfully transparent crush. God, Jim was an idiot.

“Found two more,” Freddy crowed and handed them over. “You guys were here a lot in March.”

“It was midterms,” Jim murmured. He fanned out the receipts and frowned. “You’re sure these are his receipts?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Freddy replied, sounding stung. “He gets the eggs over easy, you get the pancakes.”

“That’s doesn’t make sense,” Jim said and held up the receipts side by side against the light. “Look at this. Why would his signature change?”

John’s signature on the first receipt was small and thorned, the first name barely a tremor on a polygraph. On the second receipt, the capital J encapsulated his signature like a flourish. The third one was in squat blocky printed letters like ants marching in a line.

“Huh,” Freddy caught the receipts in Jim’s hand and pulled them closer for inspection. “That’s strange. I guess I never noticed.”

Jim felt a chill go down his spine. “That doesn’t make sense,” he repeated. “Why would he do that?”

Freddy hmmed.  “Don’t suppose you’ll tell me what this is really about,” he remarked. “This is awfully obsessive for one measly date. Although if my boyfriend looked like that, I guess I’d be obsessed with him too.”

Jim was starting to regret lying to Freddy by omission. “John’s…never said those words exactly.”

“What? Boyfr—you’re kidding me.” Freddy perched back against the shelves. “You talked to him about it?”

The receipts crumpled in Jim’s fist. “Not sure what’s to talk about.”

“You think he’s too good to be true,” Freddy said slowly. He looked sad. “You think he’s coming in here with another guy. That’s why you were looking at all his old receipts, weren’t you? Oh, Jim.”

“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” Jim spat. He waved the receipts at Freddy. “I don’t understand this, I don’t understand him. I’ve never understood him or why he ever bothered with me.”

The dinners, the saltwater taffy. They had been dating. John had been trying to date him, Jim realised. He had invited John to vacation with him at Martha’s Vineyard. They had lived together. He had slept in John’s bed. But that didn’t explain why John had been so angry when Jim had tried to kiss him.

 “John thinks I’m leaving him after I graduate,” Jim said, tasting each word to see if it was true. “So maybe he’s decided to leave me first.”

“You trust him, don’t you?”

Jim pursed his lips. “I don’t know.”

Freddy crossed his arms. “Well, you should. You haven’t seen how he—that guy’s crazy about you. Who cares where he’s been and how he signs his godamn receipts.”

And that was the crux of it. John cared about him. John loved him in his own way, for better or worse, and Jim was dragging him through the coals. He sagged. “I’m sorry. I have no idea what I was looking for in here at all.”

It had all seemed to go together, the postcards and the receipts. He thought he’d been solving some mystery, and all the pieces were coming together, but now he realized he’d been seeing things that weren’t there. The human mind, looking for patterns within sets of totally random data and generating hollow meaningless solutions.

Jim let Freddy pat him on the shoulder and buy him a beer. Freddy didn’t even try to wrest the old receipts from Jim’s rigor mortis grip.

Jim went home and bundled the receipts and all of John’s postcards into a paper grocery bag and left it on the curb for the trash guy. There was no point in someone else generating meaningless patterns out of John’s life either.

 

Nash showed up at their apartment on Halloween night dressed as the girl from Pretty in Pink. She had curled her hair and put together pieces of a lace halter top and a dressing gown in a passable impression of a pink prom dress.

“Jim, you’re not even dressed!” she complained when she saw him.

“Yeah, I am,” he argued. He and Mike had waited till the last minute for costumes, but thrift store shopping yesterday had unearthed a green tunic, a wide leather belt, and pair of loose dark pants that he tucked into his tall snow boots. They had even found an actual Peter Pan hat in a costume store.

Nash didn’t look impressed. “You look nothing like Peter Pan. Good thing I brought you some glitter.”

He sputtered. “Glitter. No way.”

She took a small tube out of her purse and advanced on him. “It’s green. It’ll be fine. Did you tape those fake ivy leaves onto your hat? Lord have mercy, Jim.”

Mike was in the bathroom putting on his blue Fred Flintstone tie, and Nash wouldn’t take no for an answer, so Jim tolerated the thin sheen of glitter she spread across his face. She gave him a once over and then a satisfied hmm before disappearing into their kitchen for a glass of spiked punch. He tried to wipe it off once her back was turned, but it ended up getting all over his hands so that everything he touched shimmered a little in the fluorescent light.

The Halloween party was at Zeta Alpha Rho, the fraternity Jim’s father and Brian had been members of when they were in college. Jim had sworn to himself that he would never set foot on their lawn, but now he, Mike, and Nash were all filing through the front door and having cold cans of beer thrust at them. Mike and the fraternity president were study partners, and Mike had helped him get an A last semester, which meant they were ‘alright’ according to the Zeta Alpha Rho brothers.

No one looked at Jim funny or told him he looked familiar or asked him for his last name. The house only seemed interested in drinking and playing ladder ball in the yard. Jim drank two gin and tonics in quick succession and ended up telling one of the brothers about his big conspiracy theory about John and the Hitcher. The guy laughed so hard that he sprayed the front of Jim’s shirt with beer.

“That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard,” he declared but thumped Jim on the back like he’d just done a good deed. “Don’t see why your friend didn’t just mail the postcards whenever and tell you he was there. Do that with my girlfriend all the time.”

Jim frowned. “What did you say?”

But then Mike showed up with a handful of Jello shots and pushed one into Jim’s hands. The alcohol and imitation lime burned like a chemical down Jim’s throat.

“Awesome, dude,” Mike said approvingly. His face was flecked with red Jello, and that reminded Jim too much of strawberry shakes and cherry popsicles and bloody freezer handles, so he plucked another shot from Mike’s hands. He didn’t know if he was getting drunk because he was waiting for John to show up or because John might not show up at all. But John had promised, and John had never lied to him.

Nash found him at ten o’clock in the middle of the living room, where about thirty people were attempting to do the Monster Mash. A girl beside Jim teetered and almost put the heel of her stiletto through his foot.

Nash grabbed his shoulder and pulled him to a quieter part of the room. Her curls were coming undone from the heat. “I’m heading out. I’ve got an early shift,” she said. She paused and eyed him, trying not to laugh. “How much have you had?”

Jim waved a hand. “I’m fine,” he said and wrapped an arm around her waist. “Hey, Nash? You remember that guy that came in with me for burgers once?”

He felt her freeze. “You mean that creepy guy?”

Jim made a face. “You said that the first time too.”

“Because he _was_.” Nash poked his shoulder. It hurt a little. “You’re a guy. You don’t think anything can hurt you. Trust me, I’m a woman. That guy’s bad news.”

“John wouldn’t hurt me,” Jim blurted out and instantly regretted it.

Nash looked horrified. “That was John? Jim, oh my god. _That_ was John? He looked like a convict.”

Bizzarely, Jim started laughing. “I thought he was the Hitcher for a while.”

Nash wasn’t laughing. “Are you sure he isn’t?”

Jim sputtered. “Are you crazy? That doesn’t happen. A serial killer doesn’t just sit across from you in the library and say, ‘hey, kid. What’s shakes?’”

Nash’s eyebrows came together. “Is that what he said?”

“No.” Jim knuckled his eyes. “It doesn’t matter anyway. He never showed up.”

“You invited him here?” Nash went white. “Jesus H. Christ, what were you thinking, Jim?”

“I was…” Jim swallowed a few times. He had never felt so utterly abandoned. “I was thinking that maybe he still wanted to see me after I fucked everything up.”

Nash’s voice was gentle. “I’m sure you didn’t do anything wrong. You’re better off without him.”

“I’m not.” Jim drew in a shuddering breath. It felt like his chest was collapsing. In a small terrified voice, he croaked, “I think I’m in love with him, Nash.”

Pure shock flooded Nash’s face and then pity floated into her eyes and the downturned corners of her mouth. “Oh, honey,” she murmured and cupped his face. Her hand came away glittery and damp.

Jim didn’t even realize he’d been crying. He turned his face away. “Don’t call me that.”

“You’re not in love with him,” Nash said firmly.

“How would you know that?” Jim snarled at her and was instantly ashamed. He expelled a rush of breath and squeezed her arm. “God, I’m sorry.  Forget it. I don’t know what I’m saying. Call me when you get home.”

Nash hesitated and then leaned up to kiss his cheek. “You’re going to be okay,” she said in his ear.

It was a lie. Jim would never be okay. John had ruined him. John had gone to the farthest reaches of the globe and thought of him. John had fed him and held him and been his father and his brother and his best friend. John had promised him that he would never leave him alone.

 

The cops came in to break up the party at midnight for excessive noise and disturbing the peace. The Zeta Alpha Rho president went out to somberly apologize and make reparations while the brothers inside gave each other a thumbs up and kept stacking empty cans on their beer pyramid. As far as Jim could see, having the cops called on your party was a badge of honor. He was starting to sober up at an alarming rate, so he did a cheap vodka shot with a few members of the women’s rugby team that had all come to the party dressed like Vampyra in varying degrees of accuracy.

He thought he finally understood the appeal of this place for Brian. The large crowd was unexpectedly good for anonymity and isolation, and talking came secondary to drinking in the hierarchy of social niceties. The brothers even shook Jim’s hand and invited him back, even Jim thought gloomily that it was three years too late.

Mike had disappeared a few hours ago yelling in Jim’s ear about another party, so Jim started back home alone, the wind practically peeling the skin off his arms. His clothes were thin, and his hat was made of cheap stiff felt. Most of the ivy leaves had fallen off. He wondered if Nash had brought a coat, if she’d already reached home safely.

Jim rounded the corner to his apartment and froze.

John was standing in front of the streetlight, its ugly electric flash haloing the crown of his silhouette. He was wearing a long jacket that went down to his knees, and his hair was standing up like dandelion fluff in the wind. He was the most beautiful thing Jim had ever seen.

"You look like a stranger. I don't like it," John remarked as Jim approached.

"I look like me," Jim replied slowly. He was shaking. “Where have you been this time?”

“Newburyport,” John said. “It’s a pretty town.”

Newburyport, Jim thought quickly. He hadn’t heard of any murders in Newburyport. He was sick of being suspicious. “Do you remember Margaret Larsson from Toronto?” he blurted out. “The one from your photo? The one that you said reminded you of me?”

“Sweet Peggy Larsson,” John murmured, and there was something wrong about that. John had known her as Peggy all along, and he’d written _Margaret_ in the card.

“She’s dead,” Jim retorted. “What do you think about that?”

John nodded, but his eyes never left Jim’s face. “I heard that. Awful shame. I liked her.”

Jim shoved unapologetically into John’s space. “And Altoona. Did you hear about that one, John? What about Fredericksburg?”

John was wearing a ghost of a smile. Jim had never noticed the tiny crow’s feet at the corners of his yes. “Are you saying that trouble follows me wherever I go? Princess, I could have told you that.”

“What else could you have told me?” Jim pitched sideways, and John caught him fast in his arms. John’s body was hot like a furnace, and Jim didn’t pull away.

John’s breath warmed Jim’s neck. “I could have told you not to worry about me. That I can take care of myself.”

“You promised me that you would take care of me,” Jim said petulantly. “Where were you tonight, John?”

“Figured you would leave the party early and come home.”

Jim had considered doing that exact thing a few times. “You were waiting for me outside the door all night? Oh, John.”

“You know what else?” John’s hands slid up to his face. “I should have told you a long time ago that I was a tired old man with nothing to give you.”

John's hands cupped around his face were the only thing that was keeping Jim upright. “I never asked you for anything.”

“Honey, with those big brown eyes of yours, you never had to ask.” John was looking at him with something like wonder. "God, look at you. You're just a kid."

"Fuck you," Jim spat and glared at John with hazy defiant eyes. He reached to grab the lapels of John's jacket and succeeded on the third try. John was looking at him with a little amused smile like Jim was a puppy that had just learned a new trick, and that made Jim angrier. "Fuck you," he repeated. He yanked John forward, leaned up, and crushed their mouths together. If there was anything John had taught him, it was how to take.

“Jim,” John said against his mouth. Jim pulled back.

“Go ahead,” he snarled. “Tell me that I’m too young. Tell me that I have no idea what I’m doing, and I can’t know what I want.”

“And what do you want?” John was vibrating with thinly leashed intensity.

“I want you. God, I want you,” Jim said in a rush. “Let me have you. John, I can’t stand it.”

“You didn’t say please,” John growled and pressed forward to take Jim's bottom lip between his teeth. Jim opened his mouth, and John shoved his tongue in to claim him. Jim clutched at him and kissed back like right hook to the mouth.

John pushed him against the streetlight so hard that the metal thrummed against his back, and they were kissing desperate and messy. John’s tongue was hot and slick and overwhelmingly foreign in his mouth. John tasted like coffee and butterscotch candy and cigarettes. Jim imagined him sitting on the steps smoking and waiting for Jim to come home to him.

"Stupid," John was murmuring. "You're so fucking stupid, just like the others. You don't know what you're talking about."

" _John_ ," Jim gasped and bit the elegant jut of John's chin.

"That's not good enough," John hissed, but he had a white-knuckled grip around Jim's waist. "I want you to _say_ it."

"No," Jim spat.

"Little brat," John growled and thrust Jim back to bite at his throat. It _hurt_ , and Jim felt a wave of heat crash through him.

"Oh my _god_ ," he burst out and pressed against John's lips and teeth. “John, _there_. Oh, fuck.”

"Faggots!" someone shouted from a passing car. Jim flipped him the bird without looking.

John pulled away and then softly lipped at Jim's cheek, the tip of his nose, his jaw. "Don't worry," he said in a rush of warm breath against the shell of Jim's ear. "I'll kill him for you later."

Jim laughed. "You're sweet."

John grinned down at him toothily and looped an arm around Jim's shoulders to stop him from falling over. “Kid, you are drunk. You be careful, or I’ll take advantage of you.”

“Yeah?” Jim said and staggered against the warm comfortable curve of John’s neck. “You promise?”

 "Good thing for you I'm a gentleman." John ran the back of his hand down Jim's cheek and inspected the fine dusting of glitter across his knuckles. "Should I clap my hands twice or something?"

Jim wormed his fingers underneath the sleeve of John’s jacket. "Do you believe in me, John?"

"Mm." John backed him into a corner with his head bowed close so they were breathing into each other’s mouths. "I do."

Jim scanned the street over John's shoulder to check that no one else was watching them. "You want to be on the other side of my door this time?" he murmured and warmed at John's answering laugh.

The apartment smelled like punch and candy corn. John slammed him against the door the second they were inside. “Hey there, cutie,” he growled. “Did I ever tell you that you remind me of me when I was your age?”

Jim crooked a smile at him. “Awfully narcissistic of you, John,” he replied, and John burst out into delighted laughter and kissed him long and deep and filthy. Jim made an utterly embarrassing noise and felt his knees buckle a little.

He stumbled away and ran into his room, thrilled when John chased him like they were kids playing tag.

"Shower," Jim declared as they burst in. "I'm sweaty and covered in glitter. Wait here."

"Okay," Jim agreed and lounged across Jim's bed with his hands behind his head, one leg crooked up. He raised an eyebrow, and Jim swallowed before turning away to grab a change of clothes.

Jim took the fastest shower of his life. The water was boiling hot, and he scrubbed at his hair and skin with a cursory application of soap to purge the smell of alcohol, rancid deodorant, and the press of two many bodies. The drain puddled with Nash's shining green glitter, and it lapped at the arches of Jim's feet like a tiny glistening lake. He couldn't resist a few passes over his dick as he thought of John unfolded across his bed like a love letter.

Jim's hair was curling from the humidity when he emerged from the shower. His skin glowed from the hot water and rough terry cloth towel, and the thin recycled air from the baseboards was like a cool sip of wine.

The radio sitting in his window sill was on, some brisk late night jazz on public radio. John was lying on his side across the bed with one finger winding and unwinding the telephone cord and a foot tapping to the music. He looked like he belonged there. God, he was beautiful.

"Hi," Jim gasped out.

John turned his head and then rose up like a shot without taking his eyes away. "Hi yourself," he replied. The tip of his tongue darted out to lick the cupid's bow of his lip.

Jim took a step forward. John was right where Jim had always wanted him, and suddenly he had no idea what to do. "John."

"Jimmy," John teased.  "You have a nice shower?"

"Y-Yeah."

"The night is still young." John sank back on his elbows and tilted up his chin. "What do you want to do?"

"I-I don't know," Jim confessed. He didn't know how John could look so relaxed. Jim's palms were damp, from condensation or sweat, he didn't know. He forced them to lie loose at his side, one hip jutting out. "I don't feel like going out."

"Me neither," John agreed and smirked like he knew every single dirty thought that had ever crossed Jim's mind. "I'm open to ideas."

Jim's face burned, but he took another step forward. "John. Don't, please don't—"

"Please. I really do like that word," John murmured. He cocked his head and drummed his fingers against his mouth. "Tell me, kiddo. Have you ever…" John's eyes slid down his body, and Jim was suddenly very conscious of standing there in just his ratty t-shirt and boxers.

He shivered involuntarily.  John looked like he was sizing him up for dinner. "No. I haven't."

Without moving, Jim's entire posture suddenly changed into an aggressive stance, and he looked at Jim through his eyelashes. "You want to?"

Heat zinged down from Jim's torso down through his thighs, and it was all he could do to get the words out.  "Yes. God, yes."

John smiled like a shark. "Come on, then."

Jim tumbled into his arms and felt like he was a teenager again, all elbows and knees. John wrapped his hands around Jim's face and kissed him like he was trying to devour him. Jim tried to devour him back with his tongue and teeth and fingernails. John's chilled fingers lifted up the hem of his shirt, and Jim raised his arms to let John peel it off.

The angle was awkward, and Jim was trapped for a moment with his shirt over his head. John pushed him down onto the bed and fastened his hot mouth against one of Jim's nipples as if he were a girl.

"John," Jim laughed. "You know, I'm not a—"

But then the flat of John's tongue made him jolt like he'd been electrocuted. John laughed softly and did it again. Jim had never even known he was sensitive there. It was hot and ticklish and unbearably erotic. John slid down to push his t-shirt up further, and Jim felt teeth against his ribs before pain flared up at his side.

"Ow!" Jim said and fought out of the shirt to glare down at John, who was smirking at him. "The hell did you do that for?"

"Whiner," John said and then gently sucked at the angry red bite mark.

Jim gasped and slammed his head back against the pillows. "Y-You...I hate you."

John snickered. "Yeah, kid. I know."

"Don't call me kid," Jim snapped.

"You are a kid," John replied. "You're a mouthy brat—"

"Shut me up,” Jim retorted and then nearly bit his tongue when John pushed their hips together in a long slow slide. Jim breath hiccupped, and he reached out blindly to grab anything of John he could reach—the back of his neck, his elbow, the collar of his shirt.

“I’m going to fuck you,” John said in his ear, and Jim went cold with shock.

He pulled back to stare at John. “You’re going to _what_?”

John was staring at him with an intensity that made Jim’s skin pebble. “I’m going to fuck you. Thought I’d let you know. A formality.”

Jim’s hands clenched around John’s shoulders. “Will it hurt?”

“Maybe a little,” John crooned. “I’ll take care of you. Say yes, honey.”

Jim flashed back to his nightmare of the Camaro, but that hadn’t been John. Maybe it was appropriate for John to slide into him, to make him whole, like he had done to the rest of Jim’s life. And god, how Jim wanted to be suffused with him. “Alright,” he hissed. “Okay.”

“Okay, what?” John teased.

Jim wet his lips. “Okay, I want you to...you can...” But he couldn’t say the words, because that made him think too much about his own body and what John would do to it.

John pushed him down onto the bed and climbed on top, trailing soft soothing kisses across Jim’s neck. "It’s fine, it’s fine," John was murmuring in his ear. "You can stop me."

Jim sank his fingers into John's hair like he'd wanted to do since forever. "No, don't stop," he gasped and arched up to bracket his knees around John's waist. John wrapped his square hands around Jim's legs and held him there. Jim buried his face in John's shoulder and moved, feeling the hot friction of John's ratty Levi's against his crotch.

" _Oh_ ," he said, and it came out sounding hoarse and surprised. "Oh. Oh, Jesus."

"Yeah, honey. Just like that," John murmured and dug his thumbs into the back of Jim's thighs.

Jim shuddered. "John. God. I want…"

“What do you want me to do?” John murmured in his ear. “Tell me what you want.”

“Touch me,” Jim gasped. “Touch me, touch me. _John_.”

John laughed and then pressed his face into the crook of Jim’s neck, his shoulder. He ran his lips and teeth down Jim’s chest, his arms, the inside of his wrists. He peeled Jim’s boxers all the way off and didn’t give him time to be embarrassed about it, just  splayed his wide hands down Jim’s spine and enveloped him with his whole body while Jim closed his eyes and tried not to cry. No one had touched him with intent for a long time—maybe not ever—and he had been desperate for this, starving for it. He was kissing John frantically, sloppy and wet-mouthed, and he couldn’t make himself stop.

The music on the radio changed into the loud blare of trumpets. " _And now for the evening news."_

And that was a more effective mood-killer than the prospect of Mike coming home. Jim huffed out a laugh and peeled himself away. "Shit. Here, I'll turn it off."

John let him slide out of his arms. Jim felt cold without John's warm sturdy body pressing on top of him, and he rubbed at a line of goose pimples that rose on his arms.

When he looked back, John was lying on the bed with his arm bent and propping up his head. His mouth was puckered into a smirk, and he looked pleased with himself, like Jim was a prize he had just won. It made Jim feel good.

In a sudden burst of benevolence, he made a detour to the sock drawer and found a ratty one with a red stripe going across the toes. "For my roommate. So that he'll…uh, you know."

"Oh, don't worry," John murmured. He was staring at the bite marks blooming across Jim's chest. "He'll hear you."

Jim felt the back of his neck go beet red. The radio was still blaring, but now it had switched to the high pitched pulses it reserved only for important bulletins. It was giving Jim a headache. His fingers hovered over the off switch, but something made him hesitate.

"The suspect is six feet and approximately 170 pounds with blonde hair and blue eyes. He is a wanted fugitive and is the prime suspect in a string of murders across multiple states, including many recent deaths in Massachusetts and Texas. Please notify the police if you see a man matching this description, and do not, repeat, do not approach him."

Jim thought of John. Tall, blonde, and unbearably gorgeous John who was lying rumpled in his bed a few feet away staring at him with his electric blue eyes. He thought of how John had asked about Nash, and how she hadn't called him since she'd reached home. He thought of the crashed car on Mass Ave, and how John had been in town for alumni weekend.

Peggy Larson. Lisa Lapeta, Jim thought. Toronto, Salt Lake City, Concord. Des Moines. Vermont.

John never stayed in one place for long.

Jim thought of the old alumni document marked RYDER that he had never read for fear of what he would find there. But he knew exactly what he would find: that Ryder had been enrolled in the engineering program at Harvard but had lacked motivation and dropped out sophomore year to take a road trip and see the world. Ryder had seemed like the type of man that picked up hitchhikers, other lonely and directionless people like him. Jim had never checked for a death date.

He looked back at the radio.

"Turn that off," John called from behind him, and his voice was dangerously soft. "Jim? You turn that radio off and come here."

John had ripped apart a college student in Allentown, Pennsylvania and left him like roadkill beside his car. He had investigated all the ways the people of Vermont were put together. He gone into Altoona to gamble and drink and smiled at a pretty waitress, convinced her to give him a ride. He had torn a woman in Toronto to pieces because she had reminded him of Jim.

John was going to kill him. John had been meaning to kill him all along.

Jim’s stomach lurched even though there was nothing in it but a residual shot of vodka. “I think I might...” He jerked a hand towards the bathroom in the hall. “Would you give me a minute?”

John sat back with his head pillowed against the crook of his arm. “Yeah,” he murmured. His eyes were soft. “Take as much time as you need.”

Jim sprinted out and shut himself in the bathroom before John could change his mind. He braced his hands against the sides of the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He barely recognised himself. The bright bathroom bulbs bleached out his face and made his cheekbones stick out like brackets. His lips were cracked and swollen, and there were dark bite marks all along his neck and shoulders. His hair was sticking straight out, and the look in his eyes was half-wild.

He looked like someone who was about to get fucked.

Jim splashed cold water on his face till his skin was numb and he was gasping for breath. He kept waiting for the inevitable knock on the door and John’s soothing voice coaxing him out, but John seemed content to lie in his bed and wait for him. Jim wondered why John was being so gentle. But John knew how to play the long game.

All of John’s patience and soft words were just his way of biding his time, because John loved games. Formalities, he had said, and Jim realised it was because John knew exactly how this was going to end. Jim couldn’t make a run for the door, not before John caught him, and he knew that John wouldn’t let him walk out of here. John could just take what he wanted, and Jim had a choice between doing this the easy way or the hard way.

The thought of that made him heave, but all that came up was a mouthful of bitter half-digested vodka and Jello that Jim spat out into the sink. He rinsed with a capful of Mike’s strong mouthwash, and the burn against his gums grounded him.

He opened the medicine cabinet for something sharp and pointed. The tweezers in the first aid kid, or a nail file. He clawed his way through the medicine cabinet praying that Mike hadn’t thrown anything out. Their shaving cream bottles and toothbrushes clattered as Jim dumped them into the sink, but he didn’t care if John heard. He searched and searched and almost gave up hope till his hand fell against something in the back of the top shelf. He grabbed the nail file with a surge of relief and traced his thumb along the edge with relish. It reminded him of John’s switchblade but clean and beautiful. Jim felt safer having this, just in case something—

Then he realised he would never be able to smuggle it out, because John had let him go in naked and would notice if he came back with anything. John was _smart_ , so horrifyingly smart that it almost made Jim’s knees give out again. He threw the file against the shower tiles and didn't care if John heard.

Jim walked back out to the bedroom like a zombie. John’s jeans were in a neat folded pile on top of Jim’s dresser, and he was sitting on the edge Jim’s bed with his legs apart, his forearms braced on his thighs. Jim couldn’t help staring at the tented bulge in his briefs. John twinkled at him and held out his hand. Jim seized it and squeezed hard, willing himself to stop shaking. You never recognise wolves when you meet them, he realised, not until it's too late and they're waiting in your bed.

 “You’re scared,” John said. He bent up Jim’s wrist and kissed it, his mouth just beside the vein.

Jim bristled. “Who cares? Just get on with it.”

“It’s okay to be scared,” John replied and stroked the fine hair on the back of Jim’s hand. Jim wondered if John didn’t like it when he was scared.

He let his body go limp and pliant when John pulled him on top of him and settled Jim between the sprawl of his legs. Jim had to brace himself with his elbows on either side of John’s head, and he didn’t understand where John’s hands were until he felt slide them down the small of his back.

“John,” Jim squeaked. “John, are you—“ _Are you going to kill me?_ The question died on his throat, as if saying it aloud would make it come true.

“That’s right,” John said and ran the flat of his hand over the curve of Jim’s ass. “Get on your back.”

Jim froze. He didn’t want to die like this. Naked and afraid. John’s hands settled over his ribs, and Jim couldn’t even resist when John heaved him over, when John pulled one of his legs up and wrapped it around his own waist.

John took one of Jim’s clenched hands and put it on his own stomach so that Jim could feel it rise and fall. “What’s the matter, kiddo? Don’t you want me?”

Jim drew in a shuddering breath. “I want you,” he confessed, and that sickened and horrified him. “Of course I still want you. John, please.”

“Please,” John echoed smugly and savaged his mouth as Jim ran his hands all over John’s body. His hair, the knobs of his spine, the gentle rise of his ass. He drifted lower to the front of John's briefs and rocked a hand against John's erection like he'd done once to Ralph. Ralph, who had left an unfinished message on the answering machine because there had been a wolf at the door. Jim's fingertips ventured just past the elastic of John's underwear and then further with dread curiosity to the hot silky weight of John's cock. John grunted and pushed more fully into Jim's hand, and Jim's fingers cupped him on instinct.

John shoved against him again.  "Stay," he growled and rolled off Jim to skim off his briefs. Jim could see his bedroom door from here. He could run. If he sprinted, he could catch John offguard while his underwear was still tangled around his ankles. But that meant turning his back and offering the predatory bloodlust of a chase that Jim couldn't hope to outdistance.

He sank a little into the bed as John rolled back over. He was naked, and Jim couldn’t help following the strong lines of his shoulder and sturdy torso before settling on John’s heavy blooded cock. John was beautiful, and Jim had never been so terrified in his life. He let John pull his knees apart and wedge a pillow underneath his back. Jim watched his own legs flop over John's wide shoulders and dangle there unmoving. 

“Oh, honey.” John ran a clinical hand over Jim’s soft cock. “I haven’t been taking care of you.”

He bent his head till only the golden nape of his neck and the slope of his powerful back were visible between the vee of Jim’s thighs. Jim wondered if John was going to suck him off greedy and sordid like he’d done with the bartender at Rosalita’s.

John’s breath ghosted over his dick for a moment and then drifted further. Jim tensed. “John, what are you—“

The first dip of John’s tongue into him was obscene. Jim’s heels dug into John’s back.

“Oh god, don’t,” he cried involuntarily and flinched away.

John lapped at him again, hmming in satisfaction and holding Jim’s thighs apart. Jim threw his head back and shuddered through a ripple of pleasure that he could feel all the way down to his toes. He was ashamed to feel himself getting hard. He pushed against John’s mouth and let him lick him open, trying not to think of what would come next. John's tongue was a hot dizzying intrusion, and Jim wondered if that was what it felt like to be fucked.

Then suddenly, John's fingers were sliding in beside his tongue. Jim’s whole body went prickly hot with embarrassment and pain. He must have made a noise, because John’s fingers stopped, and when Jim looked down he saw that John’s mouth was parted and his pupils were blown wide.

Without warning, John pushed his finger in past the first knuckle, and Jim gritted his teeth and resisted the powerful urge to tear away.

“ _Look_ _at you_ ,” John said, and his voice was wrecked, like he was on the verge of coming. “I could just eat you up.”

Jim wondered if the pain was the whole point, if John was getting off on that alone. “Please, I can’t...”

"You want me to stop?" John asked. He wanted Jim to say yes. Jim _knew_ John wanted him to say yes, and he didn’t want to know what would happen if he did.

He couldn't make himself form the words. He averted his eyes and shook his head.

"Good." John grinned against Jim's thigh so he could feel the flat of John's teeth against his skin. Jim wondered at the wisdom of having those teeth so close to his dick. He flinched and tightened around John's fingers on reflex. Pain flashed up his spine, and he bit back a gasp.

" _Good_ ," John repeated and punctuated it with a shallow thrust of his hand. "Mm, that's gorgeous." He was staring at the clench of Jim around his fingers. It made Jim feel horribly vulnerable. He gritted his teeth through the pain as John slid in another finger and coaxed him open.

“I’ve been thinking,” John said conversationally. “Hell with law school. You should run away with me.”

“With...you?” Jim tried to focus on the movement of John’s mouth instead of the rough intrusion of his knuckles.

“Mm. Just the two of us. We would be good together. I’d take care of you. Tell me you want that, Jim.”

“I want to run away with you,” Jim gasped, and then John’s fingers were gone.

John bore down on top of him, their chests pressed together and John’s solid biceps against his. Jim's body went warm then hot. Too hot, he was sweltering and smothered, and John was like a mountain on his chest. Jim sobbed for breath. He could feel John pressed all along him, _inside him_ , Jesus, and it was too much. Too intimate and _wrong_.

"Are you gonna be good for me, sugar?" John murmured. His grip on Jim's wrists was just shy of painful, and Jim understood the threat behind it.

And he wanted to be good. He wanted to be so good. His face burned with shame, and he turned it into the pillow and opened his legs. He let John thrust into him shallowly, going deeper every time till Jim didn’t think he could take anymore, and but John's cock was still filling him up. Jim was sweating from the pain. A bead of perspiration trickled into the hollow of his collarbone, and John licked it up.

“"Christ, you open up so sweet,” he praised. “You haven’t been letting anyone else do this to you, have you?” His next thrust was punishing. “You’re all mine, aren’t you?”

“I’m yours,” Jim gasped. He could feel the jut of John's hips against his ass. “Honest, John. Please.”

“I know it,” John hissed. All pretense of the John Ryder Jim had known was stripped away. John’s expression was raw and animalistic. His lip was trying to peel back into a snarl. “Real sweet of you, honey, to save it up for me.”

 “John,” Jim said and bit the inside of his cheek hard. “Did you kill those people?”

John put his mouth to Jim’s ear like he was telling secrets. “You don’t really care,” he whispered. “If you really cared, you wouldn’t have let me in your bed.”

Jim couldn’t stop a sob from escaping. “Are...are you going to kill me?”

 “Why shouldn’t I kill you?” John drawled.

Jim squeezed his eyes shut. “Because...because you like me.” But John had liked Peggy. John had killed them because he’d liked them. He had pulled them apart to their basic most elegant parts because he’d thought they were beautiful. Jim didn’t want to die.

“I like you better than all of them put together,” John promised and leveraged against Jim to thrust into him again. John was sliding in and out of him a little easier now. John's dick was a familiar weight inside him. He and John fit together like a puzzle. Jim arched his back to meet John's next thrust, and something pressed into Jim’s shoulder through the mattress.

John’s knife. A switchblade clawing its way through Jim's bed to be lay couched in Jim's white-knuckled hands. Jim could scarcely believe it. He draped his hand casually off the bed and ran his hand along the seam of the mattress and boxspring, feeling for the barest kiss of cool wood and metal. He couldn't do it. He had to chance it. John had given him the knife. John had liked him enough to let him live just a while longer.

Jim shoved at John’s chest. “Hey, let me up.”

John drove his shoulder against Jim’s collarbone. “Why should I?”

Jim bared his teeth. “ _Let me up_.”

John’s eyebrows shot up, and he grinned at Jim like a lunatic and clambered off him. Jim mourned the brief loss as John slipped out of him. He rolled John onto his back and straddled his strong thighs to get John inside him again; Jim could take him in deeper at this angle, with more confidence and control, and he sank down till something glowed up his spine, there and then gone. Jim bit his lip and tried again, leaning forward and then back, chasing the brief sting of pleasure.

"Let me." John pulled him at a different angle and thrust up, and something sent shockwaves of pleasure across Jim’s spine.

“ _Oh god_ ,” Jim managed, and then John was hitting that spot again, and Jim was blinded. He felt John’s broad thumb on his dick and looked down and noticed that he was half-hard, and that hadn’t happened the first time. He wondered if this was what John meant when he said it could be good. Because it was, it was so unbelievably dizzyingly _good_ that Jim wondered why they had taken so long to do this.

He hunched over and spread his thighs a little wider, and John squeezed his hips and pushed Jim down onto him. Jim felt John stretch him, felt full and drunk with white heat of him, and he made a sound he had never heard himself make before.

John grinned and said, “Louder,” and rocked them together, and Jim wouldn’t have been able to refuse him even if he wanted to. Jim was teetering on the edge with John thrusting inside him and his hands all over Jim’s body like a benediction. John was staring up at him with dazed half-lidded eyes, and John felt powerful. He ground down into John's lap until he made John betray a quiet involuntary hiss. The noise went straight to JIm's cock.

“John, I’m gonna—“ he started, and then John squeezed his dick, and Jim was coming like a shot, his legs going weak with it. John fucked him through it, kept fucking him as all the strength left Jim’s body. His hips were moving involuntarily with John’s like he had already given up. Like he was already dead. Jim turned his face away and gasped through the aftershocks.

“Christ, if you aren’t the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen,” John breathed and reached around to feel where he was disappearing inside Jim. Jim was hot and hypersensitive, and the pads of John’s fingers were rough with calluses. The touch was more intimate than John fucking into him, and Jim turned bright red.

"Did you fuck any of them?" he gritted out. "The others? Don't lie to me, John."

"Don't be jealous, honey," John wheedled. Jim tightened around him in response,and John thrust into him so deep that Jim saw stars.

John was sweating a little now and his eyes were wild, Jim noted with satisfaction. He clenched down on John again, rolling his hips slow and deep. "Tell me I'm the only one," he hissed. "Tell me you thought about this when you were away."

John hummed. He was pounding into Jim in earnest now, and the muscles in Jim's thighs were twitching from the strain. Jim felt raw and used up. He would bet no one else had make John come so undone, and the idea that John had wanted him so much thrilled him. He wondered if John had thought about licking strawberry shake from his mouth and blowing him against Jim's front door where anyone could see. Maybe John had turned to Jim's sleeping face next to his in their house at Martha's Vineyard and contemplated wrapping Jim's unconscious body around his and fucking him into slow delicious wakefulness.

"Come," Jim pleaded. He wanted to see John drowsy and deliriously sated. "John, come. I want it. John, please."

John's grin showed his canines. “Next time we’ll do this with you on your hands and knees so’s I can see you taking me,” he promised and pounded into him once, twice. 

The first hot burst startled him, and Jim twisted away on impulse. John grabbed him around the waist and canted up his hips to meet Jim’s ass so that they were flush together and Jim could feel the hot spill of John coming inside him. And Jim wanted all of him, greedy for anything John would give him.

John was beautiful. John was every good thing he’d ever known. John was home, and it had never occurred to Jim to be afraid.

“I love you,” Jim breathed. “John, I love you.”

“Of course you do,” John said carelessly and slid his warm hands up the curve of Jim’s spine. He looked so peaceful and _normal_ that Jim’s heart felt like it was bursting against his ribs.

He latched onto that feeling, because otherwise he thought his courage would fail him.

He reached underneath the mattress.

He couldn’t be afraid now. He had been afraid all his life. Maybe he had known all along that his calling was to the sword and not the scales.

The look in John’s eyes when Jim buried the knife in his chest wasn’t surprise. If anything, he looked a little proud. “Good for you, kid,” he said and then he coughed and choked and sprayed Jim’s chest with flecks of blood.

“I’m sorry,” Jim gasped. “I’m so sorry, John.”

“You kept my knife.” John reached out to touch the wooden handle, and Jim thought it was an absent gesture until he saw John’s hand close on the knife handle, and he realised his mistake. He dove aside, but not fast enough and felt the knife slice his thigh.

Jim tried to get away, but John seized his arm and tried to drive the knife into his side. Jim dodged, and the knife skimmed his ribs. He twisted in John’s grip and slammed his elbow into John’s throat.

John fell back with a gurgle, and Jim grabbed the knife from him. He stabbed him in the same spot John had tried to hurt him. The knife came away with a squelch. John reached on instinct to clutch the wound, and Jim cut across the graceful swell of John's biceps.

“John. Jesus,” Jim said and sat on top of him in a gross parody of when they had fucked. His knees bracketed John’s legs, pinning him down. John's injured arm sprawled uselessly by his side. Jim's knife was against his throat.

The expression on John’s face was transported. He dragged his fingers up Jim’s bloody thigh and then touched Jim's face like he was anointing him. Jim willed himself not to flinch. John pushed a thumb into his mouth so that Jim could taste the salty tang of his own blood. Jim ran his tongue across the rough skin, memorizing John’s thumbprint.

"You promised me once that no one would hurt me," Jim said.

"I said no one _else_ would hurt you," John rasped. "You're mine."

“I’m yours,” Jim promised and cut into him again. The side of his neck this time. Blood sprayed across John’s face and into Jim's hair. He wanted to peel John open and crawl inside, wanted to know how every bone and tendon bound him together. Maybe this is what people meant when they said, I love you to death. He couldn’t bear the thought of John living without him.

“You figure me out yet, Jimmy?” John said feverishly. His mouth and chin were smeared with blood, and he was so breathtakingly exquisite that tears sprang to Jim’s eyes.

“Yeah, I've figured you out,” Jim gasped and cut a perfect half-moon slice that followed the line of John's pectoral. “You wanted to make me into you.”

John bared his teeth. “Sugar, you were me all along.” He ran a hand up Jim’s thigh. “You just needed a little nudge.”

“I’ll never be like you,” Jim snarled. His eyes burned. He didn’t care if John saw him cry. “You kill the people that you love, and I’ll never love anyone as much as I loved you.”

John’s expression was so soft and gentle that it hurt more than the lacerations on Jim’s legs. “You know, when I saw you that first time at the library. I thought you were perfect.” He feebly petted Jim's stomach. "I thought you were lonely."

"I was," Jim said and buried his face in the crook of John's bloody neck. He drew in a shuddering breath that rose up through his whole body. "God, I was."

“You were like a dish of ice cream waiting for someone to come along with a spoon.” John’s head lolled to the side.

“No,” Jim spat and grabbed John's chin and forced his face up. He wanted to be the last thing John ever saw. “You look at me, godammit. I deserve that much.”

John’s eyes closed. For a moment, Jim thought he was dead. He’d never been good at telling living from dead. His hands were slippery with John’s blood and his thighs were cooling with John's come. He couldn’t leave it like this. John had chosen him. John loved him too fiercely to let him live and liked him too much to kill him. They were just alike, John and him.

“Hey, John?”

John’s eyes were fluttering. “Mm. Yeah, honey?”

“Do you love me?” Jim wrapped both hands around the knife and lifted it over his head. John struggled, but Jim clamped him in place with his thighs. " _Do you love me,_ John?"

John's mouth parted. "Jim Halsey, look at you," he said reverently. He drew in a shuddering pained breath.

And then, he didn’t say anything.

Jim went cold.

“Damn you,” he snarled and drove the knife just under the base of John's throat. The impact rang up and down his arms. John’s blood was all over him, baptizing him. “John, you bastard. Don’t you dare die before I let you. John. Wake up. Please. John, _please_.”

John didn’t move.

Jim clutched the knife and fell back, breathing hard. He was shaking with adrenaline. The sheets were cold and sticky with blood. Jim didn’t know who it belonged to. Appropriate that their blood had co-mingled here in their bed where they had been lovers, where they had cut into one another to investigate what they were both made of.

And John had to be alive, because Jim wasn’t finished with him yet.

A fresh pack of cigarettes and a Zippo bulged in the back pocket of John’s discarded jeans. The initials weren’t J.R. Jim didn’t know who it had belonged to. Maybe a mangled corpse would surface somewhere in the middle of a police investigation to claim it. Jim put a leg over and hooked his ankle around John’s. John had told him to drive safe and look before crossing the street. He had told Jim to lock himself up so that John couldn’t come in. It was Jim's turn to take care of him.

It took him five tries to light the cigarette. It tasted dry and bitter on his tongue. Jim blew out a curlique of smoke and watched it form over their heads like a signature at the end of a letter— _sincerely,_ and _lots of love_ , and _yours._ In the distance, he could hear the wail of sirens faint at first, and then louder as they approached.        

 “We’ve got time,” Jim murmured and curled his fingers around John’s hand. A speck of ash fell on the sheets. Jim watched it glow as it caught. “You and I, honey, we’ve got all the time in the world.”

**Author's Note:**

> Story notes: 
> 
> I've lived and worked in Boston but never went to Harvard apart from attending an undergrad tour once, so please excuse any errors.
> 
> Brian's Shop N' Save is now Hannafords, a different entity from modern Shop N' Stops.
> 
> Unfortunately, most of the LGBT establishments in this story have closed down or been sold. Avenue Victor Hugo Bookstore on Newbury Street was closed in 2004, but I definitely recommend Trident Bookstore, which was opened around 1984 and almost featured in this story.
> 
> Non-fest material: stream the unofficial FST I put together because reasons on [Grooveshark](http://grooveshark.com/playlist/The+Scales+And+The+Sword/82157899)


End file.
